Cornell Chemists Image Basic Blocks of Synthetic Polymers
Scientists have developed a technique that allows the imaging of polymerization catalysis reactions at single-monomer resolution and, through fluorescent signaling, to differentiate monomers from one another.
Synthetic polymers are everywhere in our society — from nylon and polyester clothing to Teflon cookware and epoxy glue. At the molecular level, these polymers’ molecules are made of long chains of monomer building blocks, the complexity of which increases functionality in many such materials.
In particular, copolymers, which consist of different types of monomers in the same chain, allow for fine-tuning of the material’s properties, said Peng Chen, the Peter J.W. Debye Professor of Chemistry in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) at Cornell. The monomer sequence plays a critical role in a material’s properties, but scientists until now have lacked a method for sequencing synthetic copolymers.