Abstract
Thermoresponsive poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) has many analogs that exhibit cononsolvency behavior in mixtures of water and an alcohol. Cononsolvency is characterized by a combination of good solvents for a polymer that results in decreased solubility. In this work, the cononsolvency behavior of linear PNIPAM, four-arm (4f) star PNIPAM, and linear poly(N-n-propylacrylamide) (PNnPAM), with terminal groups that vary in hydrophobicity, were investigated in mixtures of water and propanol. Polymers were synthesized by RAFT polymerization and subsequently functionalized with one pot aminolysis/thiol-ene chemistry. Turbidimetry measurements and dynamic light scattering (DLS) were used to study the cononsolvency behavior by determining the critical solution temperature (Tc). The measurements show that the size and shape of the hydrophobic region of both the solvent and n-alkyl acrylamide monomer affect Tc and the phase transition behavior. The findings suggest methods to impart multiresponsiveness to soft material systems.
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