PNIPAM-g-PEO Copolymers

In the second step, amino-terminated PEO chains were hnked to the reactive NIPAM copolymers by condensation reaction of the primary amine 

Sample Comonomer or NH2-PEO (mol%) Number of PEO grafts PEO (wt%) Mw X 10 5 (gmol-i) Grafting solvent (temperature) 

In all cases, the cloud-point temperature was slightly dependent on polymer concentration for a given copolymer it increased with decreasing concentration. This effect is enhanced with increasing number of PEO grafts per chain. Also, the PNIPAM collapse seemed to be less abrupt with decreasing concentration. Upon dilution of the solution the distance between polymer chains increases, which favours intrapolymeric interactions over in-terpolymeric attractions. Dilution also enhances the surface stabilisation of the polymer particles by PEO. 

Recent theoretical studies suggest that copolymers consisting of structural units with different solubilities may remember the conformations they adopted during their synthesis [257-260]. Such polymers, of which PNIPAM- 

PNIPAM-co-GMA (Table 1). Thus, different distributions of substituents are possible, in principle. It was of interest to see (1) whether the distribution of the PEO grafts on the PNIPAM main chain influences the thermal properties of the polymer and (2) whether the polymer grafted at elevated temperature adopted the collapsed conformation in which it was synthesised when its aqueous solution was heated. 

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Fig. 10 Schematic of formation of a single chain core-shell nanostructure through the coil-to-globule transition of the PNIPAM-g-PEO copolymer chain backbone [67]...

Figure 11 shows the releasing and encapsulation of pyrene (an imitation of drugs/catalysts) by these PNIPAM-g-PEO copolymer chains in water in... 

Figures 12 and 13 summarize the temperature dependence of (Rg) and (i h) °f PNIPAM-g-PEO copolymer chains in water during one heating-and-...

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