Advantage of Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy for the Study of Polyelectrolytes

The advantage of fluorescence correlation spectroscopy to study single chain behavior of polyelectrolytes has been demonstrated by checking the coil-to-globule transition ofpoly 2-vinylpyridine with the change ofpH value in aqueous solution. The ultra-high sensitivity of FCS allows measurement at extreme dilution where the effect of electrostatic interaction between the chains is greatly suppressed. The results exposed first-order conformation tran- sition of P2VP as detected by FCS while inter-chain aggregation occurred in the experiments of dynamic light scat- tering.