Synthesis and characterization of a novel water-soluble block copolymer with a rod–coil structure

In this letter, a novel water-soluble rod–coil block copolymer was designed and prepared via the facile polycondensation method using polyfluorene (PF) as rod segment and polyethylene glycol (PEG) as coil segment in the main chain. The molecular structure and morphology of the intermediate and block copolymer were characterized by 1H NMR, FT-IR, UV-Vis absorption, photo-luminescence (PL) spectra, transmission electron microscope (TEM), fluorescence and polarizing microscopy, respectively; the molecular weight was examined by the gel permeation chromatography (GPC). The experimental results show that the block copolymer with rod–coil structures can dissolve in environment-friendly solvents, such as water and ethanol, possess self-assembling morphologies and take on a high photo-luminescence quantum efficiency ca. 52%.