Rational Integration of Molecular and surface interactions for lubricating, adhesive and high penetration soft materials

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Soft polymeric materials are widely used as drug delivery systems, adhesive or lubricants in industrial and everyday life devices. With the emergence of new technological fields such as soft microelectronics, wearable diagnostics or soft robotics, their use is expected to grow even more in the near future. Even though the properties of these materials have been improved over decades of development and optimization, the fundamental concepts used for their design has surprisingly not significantly evolved. This stagnancy has created a lack of knowledge that is hampering the translation of novel technologies where fast bonding/debonding, stimuli responsive lubrication or high tissue penetration are required. The technological challenge inherent to the development of such materials is the control of intermolecular forcesbetween the material and its environment. The aim of the present research program is to palliate to this lack of knowledge and to provide technological innovations by rationally integrating molecular and surface interactions into the design of novel soft materials. Our approach consists in using soft polymers exhibiting a unique architecture called bottle-brush (BB) and to integrate such polymers into stimuli responsive materials. The unique properties of BB polymers and their ability to interact in synergy with their environment enables the creation of novel technologies never explored before. Our research program explores three main areas: 1- Stimuli responsive lubricating systems 2-Stimuli responsive adhesives 3-Stimuli responsive nanodevices for deep tissue drug delivery These studies will build a unique ground of knowledge to advance the development of stimuli responsive BB polymers and validate their potential use in new technologies that are presently in high demand. We foresee that Canada's biotechnological industry will benefit the most from the different technological platforms that will be tested during this research program.