Polyurea Structure Characterization by HR-MAS NMR Spectroscopy

Abstract

Owing to the presence of abundant interchain interactions such as hydrogen bonds, polyureas (PU) are only swellable or soluble in a limited number of highly protonic solvents, and the viscosity of the solutions obtained is very high, making their chemical structure characterization hard or even impossible by standard NMR. Accurate structure analysis is also hard by solid-state NMR due to low spectral resolution. The presence of a side reaction in their synthesis generating biuret cross-links is often invoked to explain their insolubility. Here we demonstrate that High Resolution Magic Angle Spinning (HR-MAS) NMR is an efficient tool for the chemical structure analysis even for cross-linked PU. With 1H, 13C, and 1H–15N HSQC combined, a variety of linear and cross-linked PU is analyzed by HR-MAS NMR, and conclusive information on their chemical structure is obtained, which reveals for the first time that the biuret group is absent in all PU.