Simple Model for the Kinetics of Stimuli-Responsive Gels with Porous Structures

Stimuli-responsive gels are the polymer gels whose volume is varied according to environmental conditions.It has been reported that stimuli-responsive gels with an inhomogeneous structure exhibit faster volume changes than gels without such structures.It is understood as a difference in the transfer dynamics of the solvent, though, there are few models for discussing the effect of inhomogeneity explicitly.In this paper, we propose a simple model for the kinetics of volume change by introducing inhomogeneity as the probability distribution of a random variable that characterizes the structure.Under this framework, we demonstrate that inhomogeneity actually increases the rate of volume change.