Luis Alejandro Fuentes

Design of thermoresponsive copolymers based on N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) for selective metal ion removal in water systems. Increasing concentrations of hardness ions such as Ca2+ and Mg2+, along with toxic metals like Pb2+ and Hg2+, present significant challenges to water quality and infrastructure. To address this, carboxylic acid–containing monomers are copolymerized with NIPAM to enable metal ion coordination through chelation and electrostatic interactions. The resulting materials exhibit lower critical solution temperature (LCST) behavior, allowing temperature-driven phase separation for controlled metal sequestration and recovery in water treatment applications.