Polydisperse methyl β-cyclodextrin-epichlorohydrin polymers: Variable contact time 13C CP-MAS solid-state NMR characterization

Abstract

The polymerization of partially methylated β-cyclodextrin (CRYSMEB) with epichlorohydrin was carried out in the presence of a known amount of toluene as imprinting agent. Three different preparations (D1, D2 and D3) of imprinted polymers were obtained and characterized by solid-state 13C NMR spectroscopy under cross-polarization magic angle spinning (CP-MAS) conditions. The polymers were prepared by using the same synthetic conditions but with different molar ratios of imprinting agent/monomer, leading to morphologically equivalent materials but with different absorption properties. The main purpose of the work was to find a suitable spectroscopic descriptor accounting for the different imprinting process in three homogeneous polymeric networks. The polymers were characterized by studying the kinetics of the cross-polarization process. This approach is based on variable contact time CP-MAS spectra, referred to as VCP-MAS. The analysis of the VCP-MAS spectra provided two relaxation parameters: TCH (the CP time constant) and T1ρ (the proton spin-lattice relaxation time in the rotating frame). The results and the analysis presented in the paper pointed out that TCHis sensitive to the imprinting process, showing variations related to the toluene/cyclodextrin molar ratio used for the preparation of the materials. Conversely, the observed values of T1ρ did not show dramatic variations with the imprinting protocol, but rather confirmed that the three polymers are morphologically similar. Thus the combined use of TCH and T1ρ can be helpful for the characterization and fine tuning of imprinted polymeric matrices.