Soft Matter Technology at KIT: Chemical Perspective from Nanoarchitectures to Microstructures

Abstract

Bioinspiration has emerged as an important design principle in the rapidly growing field of materials science and especially its subarea, soft matter science. For example, biological cells form hierarchically organized tissues that not only are optimized and designed for durability, but also have to adapt to their external environment, undergo self‐repair, and perform many highly complex functions. Being able to create artificial soft materials that mimic those highly complex functions will enable future materials applications. Herein, soft matter technologies that are used to realize bioinspired material structures are described, and potential pathways to integrate these into a comprehensive soft matter research environment are addressed. Solutions become available because soft matter technologies are benefitting from the synergies between organic synthesis, polymer chemistry, and materials science.

Controlling Regioselectivity in Palladium‐Catalyzed C−H Activation/Aryl–Aryl Coupling of 4‐Phenylamino[2.2]paracyclophane

“…The products can be readily transformed to showcase their utility in developing new planar chiral ligands or catalyst systems for stereo‐controlled transformations [21] . Beyond ligand/catalyst design, besides, inspired by the recent reports exploiting PCP scaffolds in (deep) blue through‐space conjugated thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) emitters, circularly polarized luminescence (CPL), [22] and other PCP‐based chemical vapor deposition (CVD) functional materials, [23] we believe this new methodology and as well as the corresponding products could diversify PCP applications in designing conceptually novel and efficient PCP‐based materials.…”

Progress in aggregation‐induced emission‐active fluorescent polymeric hydrogels

“…[ 37 ] All of these systems have demonstrated the potential of preparing stimuli‐responsive FPHs by grafting AIEgens as pendant groups. Considering the fact that many different external stimuli (e.g., pH, salts, light, electricity) are known to affect smart polymer chain conformation, [ 38–41 ] more research efforts are expected to construct robust FPHs with multiresponsiveness and versatile uses.…”

The Vibrant Interplay of Light and Self‐Reporting Macromolecular Architectures

“…Mimicking functions of natural materials is a beneficial endeavor to expand applications in the fields of chemistry and materials sciences. [ 1 ] Indeed, the recent decade has witnessed the development of advanced soft‐matter materials [ 2 ] with unprecedented properties, and thus the evolution of technologies towards stimuli‐responsive materials [ 3 ] capable of responding to exo‐ or endogenous triggers has been accelerated. Various stimuli‐responsive properties ranging from sensing to adoptive behaviors have been envisioned by using biological systems as the benchmark.…”