APPLICATIONS. INTELLIGENT POLYMERS

Decades of combined spectral and chemistry expertise have led to vast collections of searchable user databases containing over 300 000 UV, IR, Raman and NMR spectra, covering pure compounds, a broad range of commercial products and special libraries for applications in polymer chemistry (cf. Section 1.4.3). Spectral libraries are now on the hard disks of computers. Interpretation of spectra is frequently made only by computer-aided search for the nearest match in a digitised library. The spectroscopic literature has been used to establish computer-driven assignment programs (artificial intelligence). 

Significant developments have occurred in recent years in the fields of biopolymers and biomaterials. New synthetic materials have been synthesized and tested for a variety of biomedical and related applications from linings for artifical hearts to artifical pancreas devices and from intraocular lenses to drug delivery systems. Of particular interest in the future is the development of intelligent polymers or materials with special functional groups that can be used either for specialty medical applications or as templates or scaffolds for tissue regeneration. 

Lendlein A., Tailor-made intelligent polymers for biomedical applications in Tao X. (ed.) Smart Fibres, Fabrics and Clothing, Woodhead Publishing, Cambridge, 2001. 

In the last two decades, the development of poljoners which change their structures and properties in response to environmental stimuli such as pH, temperature, and light has attracted a great deal of attention (1-3). Such polymers have been called smart polymers, intelligent polymers, stimulus-sensitive pol3uners, or responsive polymers. They have been used in many applications, ranging from bioactive agent delivery to separation (4,5). Various delivery systems based on the smart polymers have been proposed because of their... 

Table 4.9. Some applications of intelligent polymers and their combinations with...

Figure 4.27. The use "intelligent" polymers-biomolecule conjugates in application including bioprocesses and downstream separations, affinity separations, sensors, diagnostics and environmental water processing [115-117],...

The most extensive work on intelligent polymers has been carried out on stimuli-responsive hydrogels, particularly those based on pH-sensitive and thermally-sensitive monomers. Their most important applications are related to desalting and/or dewatering of protein solutions, delivery of drugs, on-off immobilised enzyme reaetors, microrobotics and artificial muscle. 

The fourth part, embracing the last three chapters, is focused on bioapplications. Chapter 15 outlines various bioprocesses for smart textiles and clothing, and Chapter 16 concentrates on tailor-made intelligent polymers for biomedical applications. Chapter 17 describes the applications of scaffolds in tissue engineering, where various textile structures are used for cells to grow. 

Tailor-made intelligent polymers for biomedical applications... 

Column manufacturers normally provide basic information about their columns, such as plate count, particle size, exclusion limit, and calibration curve. This information is necessary and fundamental, however, it is not sufficient to allow users to make an intelligent decision about a column for a specific application. For example, separation efficiency, the dependence of separation efficiency on the mobile phase, the ability to separate the system peaks from the polymer peak, the symmetry of the polymer peak, and the possible interaction with polymers are seldom provided. 

They are called intelligent because we can in fact utilize their distinctive properties for a wide range of applications. Various types of smart polymers are shown in Figure 10.3. 

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