Spectral, thermal and morphological studies of fluorescent dye grafted diblock copolymers

The preparation of the fluorescent diblock copolymer was carried out between poly(tetrahydrofuran) (PTHF) and poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) via bulk and ring-opening polymerization (ROP) method by using two different dyes such as fluorescent methyl red (MR) and eosin b (EB) as lone chemical initiators at 160 °C under N2 atmosphere for two hours. All the prepared homopolymer and diblock copolymer were examined by NMR and FT-IR like analytical instruments. The molecular weight of the diblock copolymer was higher than the homopolymer. The TGA results showed that the thermal stability of PTHF in the diblock copolymer was lower when compared with dye end capped PCL. In this work, the ROP efficiency of two different dye-based initiators is compared and their results are critically analyzed. The –OH group-containing EB exhibited excellent results. The dye conjugated polymer was prepared by a single-step process.