Measuring morphology, dynamics, and transport in polymers with advanced NMR methods
Material Measurement Laboratory, Materials Science and Engineering Division
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Polymers that exhibit tailorable transport behavior upon swelling are desirable for a number of applications in water filtration, chemical separations, and fuel cells. Toward those ends, we are developing chemically-specific quantitative NMR measurement tools that can elucidate local morphologies, segmental dynamics, and low molar mass transport in complex soft matter. We utilize (1) spin diffusion and REDOR MAS methods for local structures, (2) field cycling NMR, separated local field spectroscopy, and CODEX methods for dynamics on micro/milli-second timescales, and (3) pulsed field gradient NMR for chemically-specific transport on micron length scales.