RESPONSIVE SOFT-NANOPILLARS WITH TUNABLE INDUCED CHANGES

VON BILDERLING CATALINA; AZZARONI, OMAR; GIUSSI, JUAN M.; CORTEZ, M. LORENA; ALARCÓN, EMILIANO; MIJANGOS, CARMEN; LONGO, GABRIEL S.

San Sebastian

Conferencia; 10th ECNP International Conference on Nanostructured Polymers and Nanocomposites; 2018

European Centre for Nanostructured Polymers

The surface properties of soft nanostructured hydrogels are crucial in the design of responsive materials. By selecting the chemical nature and the type of nanoarchitecture one can produce platforms displaying adaptive properties.1,2 Part of the appeal of nanostructured hydrogel surfaces relies on the fact that they can incorporate different functional units and depending on the characteristics of these functional entities, the hydrogel can undergo well-defined physicochemical changes in the presence of specific stimuli, such as temperature, pH, salt concentration, solvent nature and more. The most studied thermosensitive polymer is poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAm). At 32°C, PNIPAm-based hydrogels architectures in aqueous solution experiment a drastic deswelling due to their lower critical solution temperature (LCST). In this presentation, we describe the use of surface initiation atom-transfer radical polymerization in synthesized anodized aluminium oxide templates, to design, fabricate, and characterize thermo-responsive nanopillars based on PNIPAm hydrogels with tunable surface properties. The possibility of designing responsive surfaces with tuneable stiffness, adhesion, wettability opens new avenues in the application of these substrates as "smart" scaffolds for cell culture, biosensing, drug delivery, human hyperthermia, and more.