(Meth)acrylic stimulus-responsive block copolymer hydrogels

Abstract

Stimuli-responsive hydrogels are readily prepared using a wide range of (meth)acrylic monomers due to their ease of polymerisation and their widespread commercial availability. This review focuses on stimuli-responsive hydrogels based on diblock and triblock copolymer architectures, where at least one of the blocks comprises a (meth)acrylic monomer (i.e. acrylates, acrylamides, methacrylates and/or methacrylamides). Particular attention is paid to synthetic aspects, aqueous gelation behaviour as a function of external stimuli and potential biomedical applications.