Polymers and single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy, what can we learn?

This tutorial review summarizes the most important results and developments in the field of polymer science by means of single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy (SMFS) at ambient temperatures. A broad range of topics will be addressed and it will be discussed which single molecule methods are suitable to get the maximum amount of information about polymer structure, polymer dynamics and the photophysics of incorporated or embedded dye molecules. In particular, we will report on the use of polymer films for immobilization of molecules, the visualization of dynamics near the glass transition temperature Tg, the reptation of polymer chains, the conformation adopted by polymer chains and the in situ observation of the polymerization reaction itself.