Synthesis and Characterization of Molecular Building Blocks for Responsive Materials

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Responsive materials can exhibit large changes in their volume and generate force with small environmental changes (e.g. temperature, pH, light, or other solution property). These materials have found applications as biomaterials, drug delivery devices, and in microfluidic devices. The most common materials currently used are randomly crosslinked polymer hydrogels. Their major limitation is their slow response time, poor directionality and the small volume changes. The limitations probably being slow diffusion and aggregation of polymers and also water diffusion.The objective of this collaboration is to overcome these limitations by developing molecular scale responsive subunits. They can operate without polymer diffusion and allow to form dilute gels, which make the polymer and water diffusion not limiting anymore. Therefore, these materials will respond much more quickly and exhibit a greater size reduction than the traditional responsive hydrogels.In a combined effort, the molecular building blocks were designed using structures from various natural proteins. In the lab of Prof. Holland (Cleveland State University) the artificial proteins are encoded in DNA and produced in bacterial expression systems. The lab of Prof. Hugel (Technische Universität München) characterizes the behavior of these new materials with AFM-based single polymer force measurements. As a team, the groups will illustrate various applications of the materials including optically driven molecular motors, fast response hydrogels for controlled release, and oriented responsive fibres for large and fast directional actuators.