Development of functional hydrogels for sensor applications In this work a sensor system based on thermoresponsive materials is developed by utilizing a modular approach. By synthesizing three different key monomers containing either a carboxyl alkene or alkyne end group connected with a spacer to the methacrylic polymerizable unit a flexible copolymerization strategy has been set up with oligo ethylene glycol methacrylates. This allows to tune the lower critical solution temperature (LCST) of the polymers in aqueous media. The molar masses are variable thanks to the excurse taken in polymerization in ionic liquids thus stretching molar masses from 25 to over 1000 kDa. The systems that were shown shown to be effective in aqueous solution could be immobilized on surfaces by copolymerizing photo crosslinkable units. The immobilized systems were formulated to give different layer thicknesses swelling ratios and mesh sizes depending on the demand of the coupling reaction. The coupling of detector units or model molecules is approached via reactions of the click chemistry pool and the…