Abstract
Single-molecule super-resolution microscopy has become a standard imaging tool in the life sciences for visualizing nanostructures in situ, but the application of this technique in polymer science is much less explored. A key bottleneck is the lack of fluorophores and simple covalent attachment strategies onto polymer chains. Here, we report a functional diarylethene-based photoswitchable fluorophore that can be directly incorporated into polymer backbones through copolymerization, which significantly streamlines the labeling strategy, with no further postcoupling reactions or purifications needed. The attachment of fluorophores onto selectively labeled polymers enables super-resolution imaging of a series of model polymer blend systems with different nanostructures and chemical compositions. As each individual fluorophore is able to switch several times on average between its bright and dark state, multiple time-lapse images can be acquired to observe the dynamic nanostructural evolution of polymer blends upon solvent vapor annealing. With this demonstration of a universal, simplified labeling strategy and the ability to image polymer assembly under native conditions, this reported fluorophore may promote the widespread use of super-resolution microscopy in the polymer community.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1432-1437 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | ACS Macro Letters |
| Volume | 7 |
| Issue number | 12 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 18 2018 |
Funding
We are grateful to Profs. Julia Kalow and John Torkelson for access to their equipment and useful discussions. We thank Prof. Masakazu Morimoto for his assistance in dye synthesis. We acknowledge the Donors of the American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund for partial support of this research. Software for localization analysis was developed with the help of Charles Laughlin and support from Northwestern’s Summer Internship Grant Program. This work made use of the SPID facility of Northwestern University’s NUANCE Center, which has received support from the Soft and Hybrid Nanotechnology Experimental (SHyNE) Resource (NSF ECCS-1542205); the MRSEC program (NSF DMR-1720139) at the Materials Research Center; the International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN); the Keck Foundation; and the State of Illinois, through the IIN. This work made use of NMR and MS instrumentation at the Integrated Molecular Structure Education and Research Center (IMSERC) at Northwestern University, which has received support from the NSF (NSF-CHE 9871268). This work was performed in collaboration with award 70NANB14H012 from U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology as part of the Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD).
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Organic Chemistry
- Polymers and Plastics
- Inorganic Chemistry
- Materials Chemistry