Title

Effect of Polydispersity on Fluorescence Quenching in Micelles Formed by Telechelic Associative Polymers

Comments

Copyright © 2007 American Chemical Society Metadata only available from this repository This article was originally published in Macromolecules - Journal of the American Chemical Society in 2007. The full article can be found at http://pubs.acs.org

Abstract

Time-resolved fluorescence quenching studies, using pyrene as a probe for micellar environments in solutions of a telechelic associating polymer based on PEG with n-C12 (dodecyl) hydrophobic end groups, have been carried out to determine the aggregation number(s) of the micelles. At low [pyrene]/[hydrophobe] values, η, quencher-average aggregation numbers, Nq, calculated from the fitting of the fluorescence decay curves to the Infelta equation were found to decrease rapidly as η increased. By fitting the Nq vs η plots to a cubic curve [Warr, G. G.; Grieser, F. J. Chem. Soc., Faraday Trans. 1 1986, 82, 1813], this observation was shown to be consistent with a highly skewed, polydisperse distribution of micelle aggregation numbers, described by a weight-average aggregation number of 75 and a standard deviation of 86. For a given polymer concentration in the range 1.0−2.5 g dL-1, the fluorescence decay curves did not produce parallel log(I/I0) vs time plots, as would be expected for a monodisperse array of micelles. Instead, the plots showed a characteristic intersection. Simulation of these curves using Infelta-type equations could not reproduce this behavior, indicating that a more refined model may be needed. This detailed study of the distribution of aggregation number in associative telechelic polymers is discussed in the context of recent investigations [Meng, X.-X.; Russel, W. B. Macromolecules 2005, 38, 593], from which it is suggested that polydispersity of micelle size is to be expected as a normal feature of such systems.

Disciplines

Chemistry | Polymer Chemistry

Recommended Citation

English, R. J., Ratcliffe, I., Blanchard, R. L., & Parsons, B. J. (2007)'Effect of Polydispersity on Fluorescence Quenching in Micelles Formed by Telechelic Associative Polymers'. Macromolecules, 40(18), 6699-6708


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