Abstract:

Despite advancement in developing new reversible dynamic polymer hydrogels utilizing different chemical crosslink and exhibiting exciting viscoelastic properties, there has been limited work quantifying the relation between the kinetic parameters of the chemical exchange at the cross link, and the bulk properties of the material, such as the characteristic relaxation time (). In recent work [1] the bulk properties of a polymer network comprised of crosslinks undergoing associative thiol exchange with dithiolalkadienes are explored in relation to chemical kinetics, computational electronic description, and mechanistic rational. The work promotes exciting frontiers in chemically informed material design.

1. Zhang, V.; Accardo, J. V.; Kevlishvili, I.; Woods, E. F.; Chapman, S. J.; Eckdahl, C. T.; Stern, C. L.; Kulik, H. J.; Kalow, J. A. Tailoring Dynamic Hydrogels by Controlling Associative Exchange Rates. Chem 2023, 9 (8), 2298–2317. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chempr.2023.05.018.