CHAPTER 14: Biocatalytically-active Amphiphilic Polymer Co-networks

Amphiphilic polymer co-networks (APCNs) frequently present a co-continuous nanostructure that swells in water and organic solvents. This behaviour can be exploited to activate enzymes as catalysts in an organic solvent by entrapping them in the APCNs hydrophilic phase. This chapter reports on APCN designs particularly useful for this application. The performance of such biocatalytic materials for different enzymes is discussed. Furthermore, the chapter presents studies that extract polymer structure–enzyme activity relationships for APCNs and look into diffusion limitations of enzymes in APCNs and how to overcome them. Finally, the influence of chiral APCNs on the enantioselectivity of entrapped enzymes is shown.