Abstract

In last few years, polymeric materials have been extensively used in biomedical and pharmaceutical applications due to their wide range of properties which can be easily modulated by tuning their structures. Family of polymers like poly(2-oxazoline)s (POX) has gained much more interest as biomaterials and other applications in last 20 years. The straight forward synthesis of POX gives many opportunities for tailoring the properties of the resulting biomaterials and allowing the researchers to explore new conjugation chemistry, fine-tune the molar mass and hydrophilic-lipophilic balance. However, poly(2-alkyl-2-oxazoline)s are analogues of poly(aminoacids) whose properties can be tuned by changing the side chain of the 2-oxazoline and prepared by cationic ring opening polymerization. Researchers have attracted attention to these Polyethylene imine (PEI) structures due to their significant antimicrobial activity and deoxyribonucleic (DNA) neutralization ability. PEI is a polar cationic polymer containing primary, secondary and tertiary amino groups, which is readily soluble in aqueous solutions. PEI particles have been frequently used as template for metal nanoparticle preparation. The Co, Ni and Cu composites of polyethylene imine were used in hydrogen generation. These PEI-metal composites have significant catalytic performances in the hydrolysis reactions. It has been found that PEI template offered better characteristics than the other templates providing many advantages like metal loading capacity of PEI increased by sequential loading and reduction cycles, high conversion and activity. In this chapter, we will review the synthesis, biological application and catalytic properties of Poly(ethylene imine) and Poly(2-oxazoline) supported catalyst.