• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.51 no.6
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• pp.513-519
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• 2007

A vesicle forming polymer, poly(sodium acrylamidoundecanoate) (PSAU) and a water-soluble distyrylbenzene- based fluorophore, TPADSB-C were synthesized and characterized by using UV-vis and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. An inter-chain vesicle formation of PSAU was observed at ~0.01 g/L from N-phenyl naphthylamine fluorescence measurement with changing PSAU concentration in water. Above critical aggregation concentration of PSAU, optical properties of TPADSB-C were investigated to study the microenvironment modulation through dye incorporation in the polymeric vesicle. The emission of TPADSB-C in the presence of PSAU vesicles was blue-shifted and the PL quantum efficiency was increased to 90% due to the microenvironment (e.g. polarity) change in aqueous solution. This study shows that the polymeric vesicle containing molecular fluorophores has a great potential as an efficient, stable and biocompatible labeling tag in biological cell imaging.