Stimuli-responsive polymer coatings can be used as functional elements in nanotechnologies such as valves in microfluidic devices, as membranes in biomedical engineering, as substrates for culture of biological tissues or substrates of low friction. However, such coatings usually suffer from major shortcomings such as lack of selectivity and poor environmental stability. The talk will present a new generation of multi-responsive hierarchical coatings aiming to overcome some of these limitations. A multi-stimuli coating, consisting of a 2D array of thermo-responsive microgels surface-functionalized with non-responsive or pH-responsive polymers, was developed to tune independently the surface chemistry and the swelling behavior using different stimuli. The talk will report results showing how the characteristic dimensions (i.e. layer thickness) can indeed be controlled without affecting the surface properties (i.e. adhesion) of the functionalized microgel arrays. The responsiveness of the hierarchical coatings was investigated using the Surface Forces Apparatus allowing adhesion, friction and layer thickness to be accurately determined under different stimuli.

Hierarchical microgels as coatings for independent and specific control of surface properties

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.