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Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Materials Research Laboratory have used an instrument called magnetic tweezers to stretch a polymer and measure its nanoscale structure and other properties.
This work could lead to a modestly priced and rapid tool to screen for polymer properties with applications in drug delivery to renewable biomaterials, according to a press release. The work also validates a theory about polymer structure insolvent that was the basis for a Nobel Prize awarded in the 1970s.
The UCSB researchers used their method to study polyethylene glycol (PEG), which is frequently used in cosmetics, adhesives, and medicines, and as a nonfouling coating agent for medical implants and sensors. They reported a framework for comparing biomolecules and synthetic polymers based on chain structure in a journal article earlier this fall.
“Many companies are looking to replace the petroleum-based polymers they use in consumer products with polymers made from biomass, such as sugarcane or cellulose,” said Glenn Fredrickson, professor, and chair of functional materials and founding director of the Mitsubishi Chemical Center for Advanced Materials at UCSB, in a statement. “If their methods could be made into a compact and inexpensive screening tool for polymer properties in an industrial setting, it could be important in affecting industry transformation to producing polymers from renewable resources.”
Omar, an assistant professor of materials at UCSB, explained in a statement how the method works:
We attach one end of the PEG molecule to a surface, and the other to a tiny magnetic bead, then pull on the bead by applying a magnetic field. …The significance is that we’re able to perform the elastic measurements — force vs. length measurement — to see aspects of polymer structure that are hard to see in any other way, and we can do it within minutes on a benchtop apparatus.
Previously, the methods used to obtain similar data for polymers required neutron or X-ray diffraction, which involves expensive national facilities such as nuclear reactors or particle accelerators.
Saleh and his graduate student Andrew Dittmore were inspired to develop the magnetic tweezers method by work from Paul Flory and Philip Pincus, according to the press release. Flory won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1974 for his theories regarding polymer structure in a solvent. Pincus, a professor of materials and physics at UCSB, built on that work by adding force as an experimental variable.
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