Proceedings of the Polymer Society of Korea Conference (한국고분자학회:학술대회논문집)

The Polymer Society of Korea (한국고분자학회)
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Temperature-dependent Conformational changes of Single Polymer Chains

  • Ohno, Naoto (Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology) ;
  • Watanabe, Kenji (Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology) ;
  • Nakajima, Ken (Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology) ;
  • Nishi, Toshio (Department of Organic and Polymeric Materials, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology)
  • Published : 2006.10.13
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Abstract

Atomic force microscope (AFM) enables us to stretch a single polymer chain by picking it at its two modified termini. Using this method called "nanofishing," we have studied statistical properties of single polymer chains. A force-extention curve obtained for a polystyrene with thiol termini in a cyclohexane showed a good agreement with a worm-like chain (WLC) model, and thus gave microscopic information about entropic elasticity. In this report, the experiments were performed at wide-range temperatures, resulting in wide-range solvent qualities from poor to good solvent condition. The temperature dependence of statistical properties of polystyrene was examined. The coil-strand transformation realized in a poor solvent was also discussed.

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