Temperature-Responsive Polymers

Chapter 2Thermoresponsive Multiblock Copolymers: Chemistry, Properties and Applications

Anna P. Constantinou and Theoni K. Georgiou

Department of Materials, Imperial College London, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

2.1 Introduction

Thermoresponsive polymers have gained significant scientific interest over the last 50 years on account of their potential applications in tissue engineering [1–3], 3‐D printing [4, 5] and the combination of the two fields in order to print 3‐D scaffolds for tissue engineering [4, 6–9]. They have also been applied in drug delivery [3, 10–12], gene delivery [3], catalysis [13–19], filtration [20–23] and bioseparation [24–27] and as functional materials [28–32]. This chapter is focused on block copolymers, i.e. on polymers that are based on more than one repeated units, and the same repeated units are organised in blocks. The importance of the block architecture on the thermoresponsive properties of the polymers is discussed and identified.

2.2 Chemistry of Thermoresponsive Block‐based Copolymers

Well‐established thermoresponsive units are ethylene glycol (EG) [4, 33–67], propylene glycol (PG) [37, 40, 49–67], N‐isopropylacrylamide (NIPAAm) [68–97], 2‐(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate (DMAEMA) [98–104] and several EG‐based (meth)acrylate units including methoxy ethylene glycol acrylate (EGA) [105], methoxy di(ethylene glycol) acrylate (DEGA) [106–109], ethoxy di(ethylene glycol) acrylate (eDEGA) [110], methoxy di(ethylene glycol) methacrylate (DEGMA) [111–113] and methoxy ...