An article in Biomacromolecules reports experiments conducted at the Australian Synchrotron’s Infra-red beamline to study phase separation in biopolymer blends biosynthesised by Rob Russell of the biodeuteration team at the National Deuteration Facility (NDF), using deuterated precursors coming out of the Chemical Deuteration Labs at the NDF.
This investigation demonstrates that biodeuteration combined with Infra-red microspectroscopy represents a useful tool for mapping the phase behaviour of polymer blends.
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This work forms part of Rob's PhD research, being undertaken part time with Prof Peter Holden, Director of the NDF, and A/Prof John Foster of the UNSW Bio/Polymers Research Group. Further experiments will investigate the role of nanoparticles on polymer miscibility and suitability in biomedical applications.
The full reference for the on-line paper is: “Deuterated Polymers for Probing Phase Separation Using Infrared Microspectroscopy”, R. A. Russell,T. A. Darwish, L. Puskar,D. E. Martin,P. J. Holden and L. John R. Foster, Biomacromolecules (2013); DOI: 10.1021/bm4017012.