We have designed new materials that integrate the photochemistry of metal-coordination complex into polymers. The inclusion of transition metal ions allowed for new photoreactivity in the polymers where the bonding interactions, and thus polymer cross-linking, was controlled with light. Depending on the type of metal and coordinated ligand, coordination complexes offer a diversity of reactivity due to the changing metal-ligand binding interactions (energy, geometry etc.). We have integrated such metal-coordination bonding into polysaccharide-based materials to create photoresponsive gels. These gels showed changes in mechanical properties and pore size after light irradiation, and could be used as scaffold materials for tissue engineering. We also created model polymer materials to understand how we could influence and control material properties by tuning the metal ion and ligand. We showed that by changing the geometry of ligand coordination, we could control the mechanical properties of the resulting materials. In addition, such metallopolymers showed reversible photoreactivity, where light irradiation led to softening of the materials.

Controlling mechanical properties of polymeric materials using photo-active metal coordination interactions

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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