Nano-structure and dynamics of polymer gels studied by super-resolution single molecule imaging

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15H03867
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Polymer/Textile materials
• Research Institution: Japan Atomic Energy Agency (2016-2017); Kyoto University (2015)
• Principal Investigator: Hiroyuki Aoki 国立研究開発法人日本原子力研究開発機構, 原子力科学研究部門 J－PARCセンター, 研究副主幹 (90343235)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 高島 義徳 大阪大学, 理学研究科, 講師 (40379277)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: ゲル / 超解像顕微鏡 / 単一分子

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Polymer gels, which consists of three-dimensionally cross-linked polymer chains swollen with solvents, are known to have inhomogeneous structure. The structural inhomogeneity in polymer gels has been studied extensively by scattering methods in inverse space. However, it has been difficult to obtain the quantitative information on the chain segment density from the inverse-space techniques. The objective of the current study is the development of novel methodology for the real-space analysis not only of the network structure but also local physical properties in polymer gels. We introduced a single molecule localization microscopy with a particle-tracking micro-rheology method to observe poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) gels and succeeded the quantitative analysis of the network chain structure and dynamic viscoelasticity in a nanometric local area.

Free Research Field

高分子物性