Swift Janitor: Efficient Absorption of a Minor Component from the Mixtures of Immiscible Liquids by Thermoresponsive Macroscopic and Microscopic Hydrogels.

Polymer hydrogels are known to be efficient absorbents of various aqueous solutions. Along with the hydrophilicity of the polymer network, the presence of specific functional groups is required for the absorption of respective solutes. Alternatively, a selective uptake can be realized without any specific attraction of solutes to the network, which is shown in this paper.

Scavenging One of the Liquids versus Emulsion Stabilization by Microgels in a Mixture of Two Immiscible Liquids.

It is known that microgels can serve as soft, permeable and stimuli-responsive alternative of solid colloidal particles to stabilize oil-water emulsions. The driving force for the adsorption of the microgels on interface of two immiscible liquids is a shielding of unfavorable oil-water contacts by adsorbed subchains, that is, the decrease of the surface tension between the liquids. Such phenomenon usually proceeds if volume fractions of the two liquids are comparable with each other and the microgel concentration is not high enough.

Enhanced catalyst performance through compartmentalization exemplified by colloidal l-proline modified microgel catalysts.

Exploring and controlling chemical reactions in compartments opens new platforms for designing bioinspired catalysts and energy-autonomous systems. Aqueous polymer networks or hydrogels serve as a perfect model for biological tissues, allowing systematic investigations of chemical transformations in compartments. Herein, we report the synthesis of a versatile, colloidal microgel catalyst containing covalently bound l-proline as an organocatalyst.