title: Smart Polymers with Special Wettability.
abstract: Surface wettability plays a key role in addressing issues ranging from basic life activities to our daily life, and thus being able to control it is an attractive goal. Learning from nature, both of its structure and function, brings us much inspiration in designing smart polymers to tackle this major challenge. Life functions particularly depend on biomolecular recognition-induced interfacial properties from the aqueous phase onto either "soft" cell and tissue or "hard" inorganic bone and tooth surfaces. The driving force is noncovalent weak interactions rather than strong covalent combinations. An overview is provided of the weak interactions that perform vital actions in mediating biological processes, which serve as a basis for elaborating multi-component polymers with special wettabilities. The role of smart polymers from molecular recognitions to macroscopic properties are highlighted. The rationale is that highly selective weak interactions are capable of creating a dynamic synergetic communication in the building components of polymers. Biomolecules could selectively induce conformational transitions of polymer chains, and then drive a switching of physicochemical properties, e.g., roughness, stiffness and compositions, which are an integrated embodiment of macroscopic surface wettabilities.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Baisong
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Bei
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Advanced Technology for Materials Synthesis and Processing, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, P.R. China.|School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Life Science, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, 430070, P.R. China.
authors.forename: Taolei
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sun
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D040761:Biomimetic Materials / Q000737:chemistry; D006801:Humans; D011108:Polymers / Q000737:chemistry*; D012822:Silicon Dioxide / Q000737:chemistry; D017155:Wettability
chemical_list: D011108:Polymers; D012822:Silicon Dioxide
keywords: chirality; dynamic biointerfaces; molecular recognition; smart polymers; superwettability