Simplified method measures polymer characteristics

They believe their discovery will provide a routine analytical tool that could be used by industries that rely on polymer science to produce innovative products, including drug-delivery gels and renewable bio-materials.

Prof Omar Saleh and graduate student Andrew Dittmore of the UCSB materials department said they have successfully measured the structure and other critical parameters of a long, string-like polymer molecule — polyethylene glycol, or PEG — by stretching it with magnetic tweezers.

‘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,’ explained Saleh.

’The significance is that we’re able to perform the elastic measurements — force-versus-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,’ he commented.

Their research to characterise this particular polymer could lay the groundwork for developing a screening tool that could be used by a number of industries, according to Saleh’s research team.