Temperature Sensitive Aggregation Behavior of Poly(Acrylamide-co-Acrylonitrile) in Water

Thermoresponsive polymers have shown great potential in applications such as bioseparation, drug delivery and diagnostic. Only few thermoresponsive polymers that present an upper critical solution temperature (UCST), i.e. phase separate from solution upon cooling, in a relevant temperature range have been reported so far. Herein, a robust UCST-type copolymer of acrylamide (AAm) and acrylonitrile (AN) (poly(AAm-co-AN)) was prepared by reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization and its thermo-induced aggregation behavior in aqueous media was studied. We propose a model for the temperature-induced aggregation behaviour of UCST-type poly(AAm-co-AN) copolymer in aqueous solution on the basis of turbidity measurements, SLS, DLS, SANS and cryo-TEM.