Polymerizing Nonfl uorescent Monomers without Incorporating any Fluorescent Agent Produces Strong Fluorescent Polymers

Advanced Materials
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.201202201/abstract

Conventional polymers of nonfluorescent monomers show strong fluorescence without incorporating any fluorescent agent. The intensity of photoluminescence of these polymers is similar to that emitted by conventional fluorophore-containing polymers. This finding offers a simple yet versatile platform to prepare polymers of strong fluorescence without using fluorescent molecules.

For details,  they observed that the non fluorescent monomer forming a fluorescent polymer without incorporating any fluorophore, is not specifi c to NIPAM/PNIPAM. When other nonfluorescent
vinyl monomers (e.g., methyl acrylate (MA), N,N –dimethylacrylamide (DMA) and styrene (St)) were subjected to the RAFT polymerization mediated by trithiocarbonate RAFT initiator.

Those findings are pretty similar to what we have observed for our UV-initiated polymerization. I can see green fluorescence when polymers were formed.