Visualization of motion of individual polymer inside porous media

Porous media have microscopic pores and play important roles in industry, such as catalysts, adsorbents, and filters. In particular, understanding the movement of polymers inside porous media is important to design efficient membrane filters and drug delivery systems. In order to develop porous media with the desired property, it is important to directly measure individual polymer diffusion inside these media. Aggregation and dispersion of polymers inside porous media is a key role to design functional macromolecules. In this study, we investigated the motion of polymers inside porous media by developing a single polymer tracking method. In this method, we visualized individual polymers by using fluorescent labeled polymers and tracking these polymers by fluorescence microscopy. We focused on the relationship between the aggregation state of polymers and their diffusion properties. As a result, we visualized the motion of polymers inside porous media. By analyzing the movement of individual polymers, we found that the diffusion speed and type differ depending on the aggregation state.