DNA Meets Synthetic Polymers — Highly Versatile Hybrid Materials

DNA meets synthetic polymers--highly versatile hybrid materials.

The combination of synthetic polymers and DNA has provided biologists, chemists and materials scientists with a fascinating new hybrid material. The challenges in preparing these molecular chimeras were overcome by different synthetic strategies that rely on coupling the nucleic acid moiety and the organic polymer in solution or on solid supports. The morphologies and functions of the bioorgani...

End–Functionalized Polymers: Versatile Building Blocks for Soft Materials

We present a concise review of telechelic polymers of various architectures, focusing on the structure, solute solvent interactions, aggregation processes, equilibrium and dynamical properties and applications. Telechelics are macromolecules with functionalized, mutually attractive endgroups, which assume a variety of conformations that depend on solvent quality, salinity and pH of the solvent,...

Cyclodextrin-Containing Polymers: Versatile Platforms of Drug Delivery Materials

Nanoparticles are being widely explored as potential therapeutics for numerous applications in medicine and have been shown to significantly improve the circulation, biodistribution, efficacy, and safety profiles of multiple classes of drugs. One leading class of nanoparticles involves the use of linear, cyclodextrin-containing polymers (CDPs). As is discussed in this paper, CDPs can incorporat...

Materials for the New Millennium- Synthetic Inorganic, Semi-inorganic, and Organic-inorganic Hybrid Polymers

The properties of mineralogical and covalent inorganic polymers are brieffy described in the introductory part. Glass is an important polymer made up of rings and chains of silicate units which contain negatively charged oxygen atoms neutralized by positive metal ions. Glass and few other mineralogical types of inorganic polymers, like aluminum oxyde, could be fabricated into fibers and used as...

Carbon Nanotubes – Imprinted Polymers: Hybrid Materials for Analytical Applications