“Leveraging the gel-to-sol transition of physically crosslinked thermoresponsive polymer hydrogels to enable reactions induced by lowering temperature” published in RSC Advances selected as VINSE Spotlight Publication
About the author: Romario Lobban is currently a PhD student advised by Dr. Leon Bellan. His research focuses on new applications of physically-crosslinked thermoresponsive polymer hydrogels. In the featured publication, Romario and co-authors show that physically-crosslinked thermoresponsive polymer hydrogels can be used as temperature dependent carriers that allow reactions between chosen reagents only upon cooling below their lower critical solution temperature (LCST). In other words, they demonstrate that said hydrogels can be used to allow cooling-triggering of reactions- a counterintuitive smart material behavior with potential applications in smart clothing, industry, transportation, and medicine. They also demonstrate that the triggering temperature of the platform can be reproducibly tuned (through addition of quantities of NaCl) and that the overall concept can be applied to radically different types of reactions.