Materials that respond to external stimuli could be useful in drug delivery, pollutant remediation and in microelectromechanical (MEMS) devices. Now, chemists in Japan have made a new organic gel that switches from a normal organogelator to a heat-induced gelator depending on solvent. The long-chain amidoamine derivative, C18AA, represents the first demonstration of a low-molecular-weight material having both organogelation and heat-induced gelation properties. Tweaking the concentration of C18AA also allows the team to change the transition temperature from 7 to 52 Celsius.

• Changes in viscosity behavior from a normal organogelator to a heat-induced gelator for a long-chain amidoamine derivative
  C. Morita, H. Sugimoto, K. Matsue, T. Kondo, Y. Imura, T. Kawai,
  Chem. Commun. 2010.
  DOI: 10.1039/C0CC03223A