NMR investigation of the porosity of hypercrosslinked polystyrene and the properties of water confined in its nanopores

Abstract

The melting of water frozen preliminarily at 180 K in a free internal volume of water-swollen hypercrosslinked polystyrene networks with degrees of crosslinking ranging from 43 to 500% is studied by NMR. It is found that ice melts within a narrow range of low temperatures, 195–225 K, demonstrating that the pores in the networks are small and uniform in size. It is, however, impossible to calculate the pore size via the Gibbs-Thomson equation, since the structure of water (and hence its properties) depend on a sample’s rate of freezing. We conclude that the activation of the orientational motions of water molecules starts to manifest itself already at 200 K; upon reaching 220–230 K, the total mobility of water molecules is due largely to translational motions with an activation energy of 27–28 kJ/mol.