This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)
This Materials World Network program award by the Biomaterials program and Office of Special Programs in the Division of Materials Research to Cleveland State University (CSU) is to study responsive hydrogel materials that can exhibit drastic changes in their volume and generate force with small environmental changes. This collaborative effort by Prof. Holland at CSU and Prof. Hugel at Technical University Munich in Germany will combine the expertise in polymer chemistry and protein sciences in the US and the expertise in single molecule manipulation and surface chemistry in Germany. These responsive materials, stimulated by temperature, pH, light, or other solution property, could have applications as biomaterials, drug delivery devices, and in microfluidic devices. The major limitations of current responsive hydrogels are their slow response time and small volume changes. The objective of this collaboration is to overcome these limitations by developing molecular scale responsive subunits. These molecular building blocks will be composed of only three polypeptide chains linked together, and will respond to their environment without being incorporated in a larger disordered gel. Because of their organized folded structure, these materials are expected to respond much more quickly and exhibit a greater percent reduction in size than the traditional responsive hydrogels. These benefits should be retained when these building blocks are connected to form larger responsive networks.
The results of this multidisciplinary collaboration will be in the development of novel responsive materials that can be translated to new biomedical applications, and nanoscience, such as optically driven molecular motors, fast response hydrogels for controlled release, and oriented responsive fibers. Their considerably faster and larger responses will open the path to discover and develop new uses for responsive materials. The research is designed to integrate education at all levels - from introducing high school students to research through supporting doctoral research.
