Thermoresponsive Polymers as Viscosity Modifiers: Innovative Nanoarchitectures as Lubricant Additives

The world of lubricants is driven by the constant pursuit of improved performance in response of the requests of new engine generations. Engine oils play a critical role as lubricants in mitigating wear, reducing friction and ensuring optimal engine operation under diverse conditions. Modern commercial engine oils are complex formulations, comprising of a base oil, generally coming from petroleum sources, formulated with specific, important additives able to optimize the viscosity, thickening and shear stress in the operating temperature range. Such additives are produced in the thousand tons per year scale range. The most important class of additives for modern lubrication is made of organic polymers with variable architectures and topologies, generally referred as “viscosity modifiers” (VMs): they act as “moderators” of viscosity at different working temperatures. The tremendous advances in polymer science have been reflected in the realm of VMs, allowing the commercialization of products obtained by controlled polymerization techniques, and the experimentation of a broad variety of different macromolecular architectures and topologies as VMs. In this review we introduce the reader, together with the basic principles of viscosity modification and thermal-dependent rheological response, to the fascinating chemistry towards the improvement of VMs, through optimization of macromolecular design and architecture.