title: Direct measurement of the end-to-end distance of individual polyfluorene polymer chains.
abstract: Wide-field imaging of individual multichromophoric molecules and successive photobleaching were used to determine, accurately, the relative position of the chromophores in such systems. First, a polyphenylene dendrimer with well-defined geometry was used to establish the accuracy in localization that can be obtained by this methodology. For a signal-to-noise ratio of 20, interchromophoric distances could be measured with 4 nm accuracy. Next, the method was used to determine the end-to-end distribution of an end-capped polyfluorene polymer. From comparison between the experimental and simulated distributions, information on the conformation of the polymer could be deduced. It was found that the polymer has a nonlinear conformation. A conjugation length of six monomer units gave the best fit of the experimental data to the proposed model.
authors.affiliation: Université catholique de Louvain, Place L. Pasteur 1, 1348 Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.
authors.forename: Benoît
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Muls
authors.forename: Hiroshi
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Uji-I
authors.forename: Sergey
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Melnikov
authors.forename: Alain
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Moussa
authors.forename: Wendy
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Verheijen
authors.forename: Jean-Philippe
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Soumillion
authors.forename: Jacob
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Josemon
authors.forename: Klaus
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Müllen
authors.forename: Johan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hofkens