Molecular Motion in Free-Standing Thin Films of Poly(methyl methacrylate), Poly(4-tert-butylstyrene), Poly(α-methylstyrene), and Poly(2-vinylpyridine)

A photobleaching technique has been used to measure the reorientation of dilute fluorescent probes in free-standing polymer films from 7 nm to 20 μm thick. Similar to our previous report on free-standing polystyrene films, two subsets of probes with distinct dynamics were observed in free-standing poly(methyl methacrylate) films. The more mobile subset of probes is consistently interpreted in terms of a surface layer, and the thickness of the...