Functional nanogels applied to materials development

Nanogels are commonly used in the controlled delivery of therapeutic agents, DNA/RNA and proteins as well as for imaging and sensing in other biomedical applications. Nanogels are rarely utilized to modify or create macroscopic polymeric structure, which is the focus of this report. Our unique version of reactive polymeric nanogel materials involves globular particles that have well-controlled swollen dimensions of approximately 10 nm. These particles are composed of many short yet highly interconnected primary chains that cumulatively provide particles with molecular weights of 104-106 Da