Abstract
Stimuli-responsive polymers and their applications to sensors and actuators are widely studied. On the other hand, we have prepared the novel self-oscillating polymer and gels by utilizing the chemical energy of Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction. The polymer is composed of poly (N-isopropylacrylamide) in which Ru (bpy)3, a catalyst for the Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) reaction, is covalently bonded to the polymer chain. Under the coexistence of the reactants (malonic acid, sodium bromate and nitric acid), the polymer undergoes spontaneous cyclic soluble-insoluble changes or swelling-deswelling changes (in the case of gel) without any on-off switching of external stimuli. In this review, the design of self-motive nano-conveyer by arraying the micro-gel beads on surface and novel fabrication method —double template polymerizaiton— were summarized.
