N-Acryloyl-L-valine

N-Acryloylvaline (AVAL) is an acrylamide-functionalized, amino acid-based monomer. N-Acryloyl derivatives of amino acids are of synthetic interest due to their chirality, ability to self-assemble into higher order structures, and their potential for interpolyelectrolyte stabilization. For example, when copolymerized with N,N-dimethylacrylamide (DMA) and N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) block copolymers were shown to undergo a reversible pH and temperature-induced unimer-to-micelle transition. Once assembled, these micelles can be reversibly crosslinked above the critical micelle temperature via interpolyelectrolyte complexation of the anionic poly(AVAL) segments with cationic polymers.