Messenger Materials Moving Forward: The Role of Functional Polymer Architectures as Enablers for Dynamic Nano‐to‐Macro Messaging

Abstract

Identifying changes in the nanoscopic domain is a key challenge in the physicochemical sciences, where great interest is on sensing complex processes that involve cellular biochemical reactions, chemical heterogeneities, contact forces, and other interfacial phenomena. This has stimulated the development of diverse materials that allow subtle nanoscopic environments to be "seen". The challenge in the nano‐domain has always been the ability to sense changes on the minute scale and rapidly transduce the information out for macroscopical observation. Ideally, materials should inform when processes are occurring. Recently, new systems that leverage established concepts with fluorescence‐ and plasmonic‐based sensing have been devised, which has reinvigorated the domain, where functional polymers coupled in specific architectures to transducing motifs allow for a new basis of messenger materials to be realized. The key aspect in this regard is that the polymers allow for sensing to be achieved only when they are carefully coupled to the amplification system. In this perspective, the role of specific functional polymer architectures for the realization of nano‐to‐macro sensing of subtle nano‐messengers is discussed and where the exciting field of messenger materials is seen moving forward is pointed out.

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