Amino acid-based polymeric gel network and its application in different fields

Polymer gels are cross-linked polymeric matrix, having the ability to absorb a large volume of solvent molecules in their network structures. With inherent flexibility and adaptability along with stimuli-responsive behavior, polymer gels have been proven to be a very good candidate to find their potential applications in diverse fields including pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, female hygiene materials, drug delivery, wastewater treatment, cosmetics, etc. In recent times, significant number of efforts has been made to develop amino acid fabricated polymeric gel endowed with enhanced aqueous interaction. The inherent nature of the amino acid-based polymeric matrix facilitates the interaction with protein and gene along with the grafting ability to biological molecules. From the industrial point of view, the amino acid-based polymer gel is also viable because of low-cost starting materials, large scalability, etc. In the last decade, a significant amount of research was carried out on amino acid-based polymeric gel in the field of developing stimuli-responsive material, dye separation, oil-spill recovery, biomedical applications, and so on. In this review, we presented detailed insight into the synthesis strategies and applications of amino acid-based polymeric gels of the past decade (2005-present).