Thermo-responsive polymers and their application as smart biomaterials

The drastic development of polymeric materials for a wide range of biomedical and biomaterial applications has been explored in the last few decades. Among these materials, a new class of 'smart' or 'intelligent' biomaterial has been developed, and these materials are highly resp...

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Published inJournal of materials chemistry. B, Materials for biology and medicine Vol. 5; no. 23; pp. 437 - 4321
Main Authors Kim, Young-Jin, Matsunaga, Yukiko T
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published England 21.06.2017
Subjects
Biology
Biomaterials
Biomedical materials
Hydrogels
Polymers
Shape memory
Smart materials
Surgical implants
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Summary:The drastic development of polymeric materials for a wide range of biomedical and biomaterial applications has been explored in the last few decades. Among these materials, a new class of 'smart' or 'intelligent' biomaterial has been developed, and these materials are highly responsive to slight changes in their environments. Due to their dynamically alterable properties, smart materials allow for smart biomaterials to be developed. This review presents smart thermo-responsive polymers and discusses how they may be used as smart biomaterials. We describe typical thermo-responsive polymers that are either lower critical solution temperature-type, upper critical solution temperature-type, or thermo-induced shape-memory polymers. The basic mechanisms of the thermo-response processes will also be described. The applications of smart biomaterials with various forms, such as smart fibres, surfaces and hydrogels, will also be introduced. This review summarises smart thermo-responsive polymeric materials with reversible and 'on-off' remotely switchable properties for a wide range of biomedical and biomaterials applications.
Bibliography:Young-Jin Kim is a postdoctoral researcher at RIKEN, Japan. He received his PhD degree in Materials Science and Engineering from Tsukuba University in 2013. He started his postdoctoral research career in the Matsunaga group at the Institute of Industrial Science (IIS) at the University of Tokyo and then moved to his current position in 2015. His research interests are in the field of synthesis of smart polymers and multifunctional polymers for biomedical applications and microchips for the development of diagnosis tools.
Yukiko T. Matsunaga is an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Industrial Science (IIS) at the University of Tokyo. She obtained her PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Tsukuba University in 2007. She carried out her postdoctoral research studies at Tokyo Women's Medical University and The University of Tokyo. Her research interests include smart polymers for biomedical applications, bottom-up tissue engineering and vascular-on-a-chip.
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ISSN:2050-750X
2050-7518
DOI:10.1039/c7tb00157f