Thermally and Mechanically Responsive Platforms for Functional Polymeric Materials

Connecting a polymer’s reactivity or properties to its working environment is a grand challenge in polymer chemistry. Research towards this goal is driven both by a fundamental interest in mimicking nature’s ability to create surfaces that adapt to their surroundings and a practical desire to tailor the properties of materials to the wide-ranging contexts where they find use. This thesis investigates the development of polymers that exhibit productive changes in physical properties or chemical reactivity under an applied environmental stimulus