Talk:Temperature-responsive polymer

This article isn't copyrighted, nor is it original research. I collected all these sources of information and summarized all of the aspects of Temperature Responsive Polymers into this article. There are also no other related articles that I found on the subject. I posted this here because there wasn't much information available when I performed typical web searches on the topic.

• It strikes me as Original Research. I could be wrong. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 07:27, 19 April 2008 (UTC)
  

It reviews the information contained within all of the published resources provided on the bottom. If you read any portion of the article, it introduces no new findings from myself or anyone I'm associated with, except for my comment on PEO and PEG, which is more or less common information. Mjmacky (talk) 21:01, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

The style doesn't seem fitting for an encyclopedia, it reads as a scientific review. I suggest to change the style to make it suitable for a wider audience.128.104.179.152 (talk) 18:22, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes I know, I guess I have only mentioned this on other talk pages so I might as well put it here. I plan to majorly revise this article to make it more encyclopedic, but it'll be a great undertaking (time-wise) to get it right, which is more than I can afford to lend at the moment. No worries, this is my first article and I have no intention of abandoning it. I plan to make it superb, representing the highest of wiki-quality, but for now I have to procrastinate and check in every once in awhile to see if changes were made. Please be patient for the time being. When I rewrite this article, these are the changes that will be implemented:

-Major format revision
-Concise summarizing of supported research
-Wiki-links for all relevant material
-Anything else that comes to mind while rewriting

And thanks again for all the help I've received so far and of course if someone else rewrites it in the meantime, I'll be sure to give it a thorough read, so I encourage it if you're up to the task. Mjmacky (talk) 01:11, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

GOCEreviewed

I don't think a non-specialist copy editor would be capable of doing anything useful the article in its present form -- too much risk of introducing errors. It does need th improvements already discussed above to make it encyclopedic. --Stfg (talk) 14:58, 25 April 2012 (UTC)

Proposing a rewrite of this article

Dear previous authors,

recently, I have contributed a lot to the german article that corresponds to this one. While reading this article I agree with previous reviewers that critized multiple issues. Since about 4 years there have not been any major edits to this article so I am trying to resolve the issues.

The multiple issues of this article are: • The main issue is that the article is not about thermoresponsive polymers in general as the lemma suggests. With few exceptions just the application in the field of aqueous liquid chromatography is described. • important basic aspects like a description of the phase diagram of thermoresponsive polymers, the underlying thermodynamics, characterization methods, other applications than chromatography or specific examples are missing • already existing explanations concerning the physical basis are scientifically inaccurate

How to resolve the issues: • the extensive section about thermoresponsive polymers in chromotography needs to be outsourced to a newly created article • description of a phase diagram, thermodynamics, characterization, other applications than chromatography or specific examples need to be added • scientifically inaccurate and unreferenced statements should be deleted and replaced by referenced ones (detailed justification for each statement follows later) • the above measures make a major rewrite of the article necessary

I feel that such extensive changes should be announced and open to review in advance. Therefore, I rewrote the article in my namespace. You can find it here: User:Flitzer707/sandbox As I am not a native english speaker my style and grammar are certainly not perfect. However, this can be corrected easily by the guild of copyeditors that already tagged the article for correction after the technical issues are resolved.

Below you’ll find the justification for the statements that I did not include in the proposed rewrite – section by section.

Section: History The first two sentences are appropriate for a history section. However, what follows is not the research history (no dates or involved people are stated) but a general explanation of the phase separation phenomenon. Such explanations are important for the article but need to be placed in different sections concerning the physical properties. Furthermore, many scientific details are inaccurate and not referenced. Examples:

• This also does not apply to any polymer, for instance dissolving polyethylene oxide orpolyethylene glycol (PEG) in water requires elevated temperatures and stirring for significant time.

A reference for this statement is missing. Anyway, it is implausible that heating fasciliates dissolution because polyethylene oxide displays a loop shaped miscibility gap with LCST < UCST as shown, e.g., in this reference: Elena E. Dormidontova , “Influence of End Groups on Phase Behavior and Properties of PEO in Aqueous Solutions”, Macromolecules, 2004, Volume 37, pp 7747-7761. The following sentence is also inaccurate:

• In neutral pH and without spiking with ionic compounds PNIPAAm undergoes a phase transition from soluble to insoluble at 32 °C.

This statement omits the fact that the phase separation temperature is concentration dependent, meaning that it is not 32 °C over the whole concentration range. Although for PNIPAM the concentration dependence is small this statement facilitates the common misconception that LCST and phase separation temperature are the same. In the sentence below it is the same issue.

• At and above the LCST, the polymer chains shrivel into an insoluble glob as the hydrophobic surfaces interact and the chains become dehydrated.

This sentence is wrong. The LCST can only be found at a distinct critical concentration at the minimum of the binodal in the temperature-composition phase diagram. Hence, at smaller and higher concentrations than the critical concentration stable polymer solutions can exist even above the LCST. The last sentence may be true but needs a reference that proves an increase in publications that is disproportionately large to the overall increase of scientific publications. Unfortunately, after removing all misplaced sentences from the history section only a stub remains in the rewritten article.

Section: Major breakthroughs and novel techiques in seperation chemistry The title is inappropriate because it is judgemental. Who says that the discussed methods were major breakthroughs? For such a statement one needs several references that make clear that it is the consesus of the scientific community.

In general, I feel that that the whole section “major breakthroughs …” does not meet the notability guidelines of wikipedia because primary sources are discussed in inappropriate great detail. Primary sources may well be used for referencing particular examples. However, the section lacks secondary sources such as scientific review articles or books which are necessary to meet the “significant coverage”-guideline. Furthermore, this section is too detailed for full incorparation under the topic “temperature-responsive polymers” as it only discusses the use of one thermoresponsive polymer, namely poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide), for one application, namely liquid chromatography. Therefore, the section should be summarized to a maximum of 300 words or so and a separate article with a topic like “temperature-responsive polymers in chromatography” should be created.

Section: Developments in extraction and preconcentration This section is too technical and discusses only two primary sources (journal articles of single workgroups) in great inappropriate length. In the rewrite it has been condensed drastically to few sentences that are understandable for non-experts.

Section: Research directions As in the previous section this section is too technical and discusses only two primary sources (journal articles of single workgroups) in great inappropriate length. In the rewrite the two sources have been included as elaborate examples in the applications subsection “thermoresponsive gels”.

Section: Thermoresponsive polymers in medicine The content of this section has been transferred to the applications section in the rewrite. Anyway, there was no relation at all to “polymers in medicine” in the last paragraph.

I am happy to discuss my rewrite in detail and hoping for feedback. In case I don't get any feedback for one week I will replace the current article with my rewrite. Flitzer707 (talk) 13:11, 30 November 2012 (UTC)