Soft smart responsive materials: Fundamentals and applications (CECAM workshop)

Cosolvent driven coil-to-globule transitions of stimuli responsive polymers, often coined as “smart polymers”, in mixed solvents are at the outset of many developments in chemical physics, polymer physics, biophysics and/or biochemistry research. This reaches from responsiveness of hydrogels to external stimuli or concentration gradients of the solvent to denaturation of proteins. At the same time it is very difficult to investigate such problems in detail by experiment and/or simulation. In this workshop we aim to bring together participants from both the theoretical and the experimental communities, with the goal to discuss fundamentals of smart responsive polymers and their applications ranging from physics to biomedical purposes.