Leveraging the thermoresponsiveness of fluorinated poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) copolymers as a sensing tool for perfluorooctane sulfonate

Abstract

The swelling response of fluorinated poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) exposed to perfluoroalkyl acids was assessed to identify the contaminants’ presence in solution. Adding fluorinated comonomers heightened the gels’ responsivity to fluorocontaminants.

Optical tracking of the heterogeneous solvent diffusion dynamics and swelling kinetics of single polymer microspheres

“…The swelling of polymer entities processing unique internal nanostructures and solvent interactions can be widely applied in many technological areas such as colloidal coating, 1–4 smart sensing 5–7 and oral drug release. 8,9 Equilibrium swelling events in solvents have been investigated by various optical methodologies such as dark-field microscopy, 10 fluorescence microscopy, 11,12 confocal Raman microscopy 13 and atomic force microscopy.…”