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Rosso F, Marino G, Giordano A, Barbarisi M, Parmeggiani D, Barbarisi A (2005) Smart materials as scaffolds for tissue engineering. Yoshida R (2010) Self-oscillating gels driven by the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction as novel smart materials. Lastly, the presented photoresponsive porous gels exhibit an order of magnitude faster reswelling rate compared to the non-PEG-produced control sample. Moreover, the mechanical stability of the gels is confirmed with rheometry. Scanning electron microscopy reveals the PEG-induced pores to be in the range of 0.1–2 μm. Most significant improvement was observed in the reswelling step and is demonstrated with optical microscopy combined with kinetic ultraviolet–visible spectroscopy (UV–Vis) analysis. This impacts the diffusion of water molecules moving in/out of the hydrogel matrix, thus improving the swelling and shrinking kinetics of the hydrogel due to reduction of the average diffusion pathlength. Upon removal of the PEG porophore post polymerisation, hydrogels of different pore sizes were obtained.

For this purpose, polyethylene glycol (PEG) of two molecular weights (200 g mol −1) has been used as the porophore in the polymerisation mixture. The improvement is realised by introducing pores into the material. This study focuses on improving the speed of actuation of poly( N-isopropylacrylamide)-based photoresponsive gels containing copolymerised spiropyran as the photoswitch and acrylic acid as the proton source.
