Stimuli-Responsive Hydrogels: An Interdisciplinary Overview

Stimuli-responsive hydrogels formed by various natural and synthetic polymers are capable of showing distinctive changes in their properties with external stimuli like temperature, pH, light, ionic changes, and redox potential. Some hydrogels are developed to exhibit dual responsiveness with external stimuli such as pH and temperature. The stimuli-responsive hydrogels find a wide variety of biomedical applications including drug delivery, gene delivery, and tissue regeneration. The advanced functionalities can be imparted to textile materials by integrating stimuli-responsive hydrogels into them and stimuli-responsive hydrogels including thermoresponsive, pH-responsive, and dual-responsive improve moisture and water retention property, environmental responsiveness, esthetic appeal, display, and comfort of textiles. Stimuli-responsive hydrogels loaded with various kinds of drugs are applied for textile-based transdermal therapy as these hydrogels as drug carriers show controlled and sustained drug release. In this chapter, drug delivery and textile applications of thermoresponsive, pH-responsive, and dual-responsive (pH and temperature) hydrogels are discussed and analyzed