Recent Progress in Stimuli-Induced Morphology Transformations of Block Copolymer Assemblies

Abstract

Synthetic polymers are well known to self-assemble into a wide range of remarkable architectures with properties directly arising from their nanoscale morphologies. The rapid development of post-polymerisation modification reactions and techniques like polymerisation induced self-assembly (PISA) have fuelled new research into ‘smart’ polymer assemblies that can undergo well defined morphological transformations in response to external stimuli. These transformations can be used to modulate the properties of polymer assemblies in a ‘switchable’ fashion, offering great potential to generate smart materials that can dynamically adapt to changes in complex environments. This review aims to highlight key developments from the past five years in this rapidly evolving field, and we discuss innovations in polymer design, stimuli-responsivity mechanisms, transformation behaviours, and potential applications of shape-transformable polymeric nanostructures.