Response of fluorescent molecular rotors in ternary macromolecular mixtures

TL;DR

This study investigates how fluorescent molecular rotors respond in complex macromolecular solutions, revealing linear mixing behavior and testing free volume theory's applicability in biological media.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of rotor responses in ternary PEG solutions, enhancing understanding of their sensitivity and calibration for biological applications.

Findings

Fluorescence lifetime follows a linear mixing rule with PEG proportions.

Increasing heavy PEG ratio results in larger fluorescence lifetimes.

Free volume theory semi-quantitatively explains the observations, but raises questions.

Abstract

For a few decades, Fluorescent Molecular Rotors have been commonly employed as local probes of microviscosity in complex materials. However, without proper calibration, relating microviscosity to a physical parameter is unclear, which strongly limits their quantitative use in biological media for instance. In this study, the response of a molecular rotor in binary and ternary macromolecular aqueous solutions of polyethylene glycol (PEG) of different molecular weights is investigated in order to better rationalize the sensitivity of rotors to their cybotactic environment. More precisely, for the investigated composition range of ternary mixtures, it is shown that a linear mixing rule applies for fluorescence lifetime with the proportion of the two PEG, and with an increasing ratio of heavy PEG leading to larger lifetimes. These results allow to test more precisely the free volume theory, which has been proposed in the context of probing glass transition. Analysis show that while this theory semi-quantitatively captures the observation, its precise use raises some questions.