Synthesis and characterization of stereocontrolled poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) hydrogel prepared in the presence of Y(OTf)3 Lewis acid

Macroporous poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) hydrogels have been prepared in methanol-water (1:1, v/v) mixture in the presence of 0, 0.05, 0.1, 0.15, and 0.2 M Y(OTf)(3) Lewis acid concentrations. Synthesis of the corresponding linear PNIPAM homopolymers in the absence of a cross-linker keeping all other conditions the same shows that the isotacticity (meso dyad, %) and the cloud point temperature of the resulted in polymers increases and decreases, respectively, with the increase in the concentration of the Lewis acid. SEM micrographs reveal that the resulted hydrogels are highly porous. Swelling ratios of all the hydrogels in water decrease with the increase in the temperature. Moreover, swelling ratios of all the hydrogels in different methanol-water mixtures pass through a minimum in the co-nonsolvency zone, and the co-nonsolvency zone shifts toward the lower methanol-content solvent mixture with gradual increase in the Lewis acid concentration. Deswelling rate of the hydrogel prepared in methanol-water (1:1, v/v) mixture is much faster than that of the conventional hydrogel prepared in water. Moreover, the deswelling rate slightly increases with the hydrogels prepared with the increasing concentrations of Lewis acid. But, the reswelling rate of the hydrogels follows almost the reverse order. All these results have been explained on the basis of the formation of highly porous hydrogels with higher isotactic PNIPAM chain segment owing to the faster polymerization rate in the methanol-water mixture in the presence of Lewis acid and the co-nonsolvency behavior of the methanol-water (1:1, v/v) mixture toward PNIPAM chain segment in the PNIPAM hydrogel.