Environmentally Sensitive Luminescence Reveals Spatial Confinement, Dynamics, and Their Molecular Weight Dependence in a Polymer Glass.

ABSTRACT: Polymer glasses have an irregular structure. Among the causes for such complexity are the chemically distinct chain end groups that are the most abundant irregularities in any linear polymer. In this work, we demonstrate that chain end induced defects allow polymer glasses to create confined environments capable of hosting small emissive molecules. Using environmentally sensitive luminescent complexes, we show that the size of these confinements depends on molecular weight and can dramatically affect the photoluminescence of free or covalently bound emissive complexes. We confirm the impact of chain end confinement on the bulk glass transition in poly(methyl acrylate) (pMA) and show that commonly observed T _g changes induced by the chain ends should have a structural orig

SUBMITTER: Picken SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8506571 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature