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A novel styrenic monomer having hexafluoropropene trimer on the benzene ring was prepared. The highly fluorinated monomer was polymerized to yield a white powdery polymer, which was soluble in fluorinated solvents and had resistance to usual organic solvents, good water repellency, and low refractivity. In contrast to common fluoropolymers having linear-fluorinated side-chains, the polymer has a characteristic high glass transition temperature. Thus, the fluorinated polymer and copolymer with styrene are suitable for applications at elevated temperature. The polymers can replace the conventional fluorinated polyacrylates, which are used in large quantity as repellents with potentially generating perfluorooctanoic acid in the environment.

Room temperature fluorine electron nuclear double resonance (ENDOR) has been successfully observed for several superstable fluorocarbon radicals ·C(C2F4R)(i-C3F7)2 in solution. Three radicals were employed in which CF3, F, and O-c-C6F10SO3C2F5 were introduced as R, and all the hyperfine couplings (hfcs) obtained by ENDOR were assigned with the help of ESR simulation and ab initio MO calculation. In case of ·C(i-C3F7)3 large 13C and considerable β-fluorine couplings suggest the nonplaner arrangement for the central and three carbons at the β-position, in spite of the fact that all the methyl fluorine show the same hfc. Therefore, a rapid puckering motion along the C3 axis together with the methyl rotation should average the hfc’s of the 18 fluorine nuclei to give the same value. When one of the CF3 groups is substituted with an F nucleus, the five CF3 groups give two hfc values, suggesting some dynamics still exists for the molecular frame. When a large group, O-c-C6F10SO3C2F5, is substituted for CF3, all the five CF3 groups become nonequivalent and the ENDOR signal becomes intensive and sharp even at 290 K, indicating that the molecular frame becomes rigid. The relation between the ENDOR spectra of these systems and the intramolecular dynamics is discussed.

Selected-region intensity determination (SRID) is a method for obtaining the temporal changes in electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) signal intensity from a selected region without complicated procedures used in the previous imaging method. We used an in vivo 700 MHz radiofrequency EPR spectrometer equipped with a bridged loop-gap resonator and the SRID method to perform temporal EPR measurements of the lung area of mice which had received a nitroxide radical (3-carbamoyl-2,2,5,5-tetramethylpyrrolidine-1-oxyl) administration via the intravenous route. The half-life and initial level of nitroxide radical in the lung or the mediastinum were calculated from temporal changes in the signal intensity. A mathematical model was devised to determine the nitroxide radical concentration in the lung, which is connected to other organs via the circulatory system. Using this model and the results of the EPR measurements, the degrees of influence of the nitroxide reduction in the lung and other organs were simulated. It was found that the reaction rate (=log2/half-life) obtained from the lung mainly reflected the reduction of nitroxide radical there.

Although it is thought that perfluoro-2,4-dimethyl-3-isopropyl-3-pentyl (PFR-2) is a candidate for electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) imaging agents because of its high stability, no study has been made yet on the EPR imaging of PFR-2. In this study, EPR imaging of a phantom including PFR-2 and mice that had received PFR-2 was performed by an in vivo EPR imaging system operating at an EPR frequency of 700 MHz equipped with a bridged loop-gap resonator (inner diameter, 41 mm; axial length, 10 mm). Because PFR-2 is insoluble in water, it was dissolved in perfluorocarbon. The PFR-2 solution was put in cylindrical sample tubes with various inner diameters, and these sample tubes were placed together in a larger cylindrical sample tube filled with a physiological saline solution, which was used as a phantom. The spatial resolution was estimated to be about 3 mm on the basis of EPR imaging of the phantom. EPR images of mice that had received a PFR-2 injection via the intraperitoneal route indicated that PFR-2 remained in the peritoneal cavity even 2 days after the injection. This finding suggests that it is possible to perform EPR imaging of experimental animals using PFR-2 as an imaging agent which persists in a biological system.