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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Sep 22.
Published in final edited form as: Chem Rev. 2020 Dec 23;121(18):10908–10949. doi: 10.1021/acs.chemrev.0c00923

Figure 16. Crosslinking via interactions between synthetic polymers grafted to biopolymers.

Figure 16.

a) Schematic representation of poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm, pink) grafted to a biopolymer (black) (left). The grafted biopolymer can undergo reversible physical crosslinking above the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) (~30°C) of PNIPAAm due to hydrophobic interactions between PNIPAAm groups (right). b) Schematic representation of Pluronic grafted to a biopolymer (black). Pluronic is an A-B-A triblock copolymer consisting of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) blocks (blue) and poly(propylene glycol) (PPG) blocks (red) (left). The grafted biopolymer can undergo reversible physical crosslinking above the critical micelle temperature (CMT) (~25–40°C) of Pluronic due to hydrophobic interactions between PPG blocks. (right) c) A biopolymer of PNIPAAm grafted to keratin (keratin-g-PNIPAAm) exhibited an LCST around 28–32°C, resulting in thermo-responsive hydrogel formation due to hydrophobic interactions between PNIPAAm groups. Keratin-g-PNIPAAm was explored for applications in brain injury repair. Adapted with permission from Zhu, et al.366 Copyright 2019, Elsevier.