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Updated: May 20, 2025

Synthesis of Cyclic Polymers and Characterization of Their Diffusive Motion in the Melt State at the Single Molecule Level
Published on: September 26, 2016
FLIM-FRAPP: near-simultaneous characterization of multi-scale polymer dynamics via fluorescence microscopy
M K Jutze1, Walter W Young1, Jasney M Combs2
1Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 120 Governors Drive, Amherst, MA 01003, USA. rkatsumata@umass.edu.
Abstract:
Characterizing multi-scale dynamics of polymers is crucial to inform property-process relationships, but there is an outstanding gap between accessibility and comprehensive data collection. To this end, we present a new multi-scale characterization method, FLIM-FRAPP, a near-simultaneous, hybrid approach between fluorescence lifetime measurement (FLIM) and fluorescence recovery after patterned photobleaching (FRAPP) to probe the glass transition temperature and self-diffusion coefficient of a model entangled copolymer, poly(methyl acrylate-stat-methyl methacrylate) (P(MA-stat-MMA)). Our investigation reveals opportunities and challenges concerning the nature of fluorescence characterization techniques for the exploration of polymer dynamics.
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