Novel chromatographic separation - The potential of smart polymers

'Smart' or stimuli-responsive polymers represent new classes of materials that are currently under development. These novel polymeric materials undergo conformational rearrangement in response to small changes in their environment, such as temperature, pH, UV irradiation, ionic strength or electric field. These environmental changes alter the structure of stimuli-responsive polymers and increase or decrease their overall hydrophobicity, resulting in reversible collapse, dehydration or hydrophobic layer formation. With further research into their synthesis, behaviour and application, these novel materials have great potential to become the 'next generation' of separation media for cost-effective and environmentally-friendly extraction and purification of high value biomolecules from agri-food and other raw materials. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.