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Sugar‐Responsive Fluorescent Nanospheres
Author(s) -
Zenkl Gunter,
Mayr Torsten,
Klimant Ingo
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
macromolecular bioscience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.924
H-Index - 105
eISSN - 1616-5195
pISSN - 1616-5187
DOI - 10.1002/mabi.200700174
Subject(s) - swelling , fluorescence , sugar , chemistry , phenylboronic acid , kinetics , polymerization , polymer , förster resonance energy transfer , chemical engineering , particle size , organic chemistry , physics , quantum mechanics , engineering , catalysis
Sugar‐responsive polymer fluorescent nanospheres based on N ‐isopropylacrylamide and phenylboronic acid were prepared by precipitation polymerization with an average size of 380 nm. The particles swell in the presence of sugar, and the rate and extent of this swelling was measured with distance‐dependent fluorescence resonance energy transfer. We present a direct link between the ratio of the intensities of the fluorophores and the particle size. Depending on the kind of sugar and the sugar concentration, different swelling kinetics and equilibrium sizes are observed. With this approach we can obtain insight into complex structure changes with simple fluorescent measurements.