Magic Angle Spinning

Graft and crosslinked polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS)-chitosan copolymers were prepared through the reaction between mono and difunctional glycidoxypropyl-terminated PDMSs and chitosan. The transformation of amino groups of chitosan through the reaction with epoxy groups was confirmed by FT-IR and 13C cross-polarization (CP) magic-angle spinning (MAS)-NMR analysis. Chitosan-based materials modified with about 40% and 60% hydrophobic polydimethylsiloxane were obtained, respectively. As proved by wide angle X-ray analysis, the crystallinity of chitosan was strongly decreased through the incorporation of PDMS sequences. However, both graft and crosslinked copolymers still present a partial crystalline structure. Their X-ray patterns are not only different as compared to chitosan but also as compared to each other. For the graft copolymer, three diffraction peaks were observed at 2θ = 8.4°, 11.2° and 21.2°, indicating the formation of a new partially crystalline phase and the modification of the interplanar distances for the phases similar to chitosan. The crosslinked copolymer is even less crystalline, the peak around 2θ = 20° being strongly decreased. Different thermal behaviour of siloxane modified chitosan was registered for graft and crosslinked copolymers; the graft sample is less stable than chitosan, while the crosslinked copolymer showed an intermediate stability between chitosan and polydimethylsiloxane precursors.

Band-selective pulses are frequently used in multi-dimensional NMR in solution, but have been used relatively less often in solid-state NMR applications because of the complications imposed by magic-angle spinning. In this work, we examine the frequency profiles and the refocusing efficiency of several commonly employed selective general rotation π pulses through experiments and numerical simulations. We demonstrate that highly efficient

This research is part of a European project (namely, CODICE project), main objective of which is modelling, at a multi-scale, the evolution of the mechanical performance of non-degraded and degraded cementitious matrices. For that, a series of experiments were planned with pure synthetic tri-calcium silicate (C3S) and bi-calcium silicate (C2S) (main components of the Portland cement clinker) to obtain different calcium–silicate–hydrate (C–S–H) gel structures during their hydration. The characterization of those C–S–H gels and matrices will provide experimental parameters for the validation of the multi-scale modelling scheme proposed. In this article, a quantitative method, based on thermal analyses, has been used for the determination of the chemical composition of the C–S–H gel together with the degree of hydration and quantitative evolution of all the components of the pastes. Besides, the microstructure and type of silicate tetrahedron and mean chain length (MCL) were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and 29Si magic-angle-spinning (MAS) NMR, respectively. The main results showed that the chemical compositions for the C–S–H gels have a CaO/SiO2 M ratio almost constant of 1.7 for both C3S and C2S compounds. Small differences were found in the gel water content: the H2O/SiO2 M ratio ranged from 2.9 ± 0.2 to 2.6 ± 0.2 for the C3S (decrease) and from 2.4 ± 0.2 to 3.2 ± 0.2 for the C2S (increase). The MCL values of the C–S–H gels, determined from 29Si MAS NMR, were 3.5 and 4 silicate tetrahedron, for the hydrated C3S and C2S, respectively, remaining almost constant at all hydration periods.

A series of naphtha reforming catalysts from different stages of the deactivation (coking) and the regeneration (decoking) processes were investigated by NMR and chemical engineering methods. The dependence of the tortuosity on the coke content was determined for both processes by NMR measurements of the intraparticle self-diffusion coefficients of adsorbed liquid n-heptane. The shrinkage of the accessible pore volume as

29Si, 27Al, 1H and 23Na solid-state magic-angle spinning (MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has been used to relate nominal composition, bonding character and compressive strength properties in aluminosilicate inorganic polymers (AIPs). The 29Si chemical shift varies systematically with Si-to-Al ratio, indicating that the immediate structural environment of Si is altering with nominal composition. Fast 1H MAS and 29Si T SiH/T 1ρ relaxation measurements demonstrated that occluded pore H2O mobility within the disordered cavities is slow in comparison with H2O mobility characteristics observed within the ordered channel structures of zeolites. The 27Al MAS NMR data show that the Al coordination remains predominantly 4-coordinate. In comparison with the 29Si MAS data, the corresponding 27Al MAS line shapes are relatively narrow, suggesting that the AlO4 tetrahedral geometry is largely unperturbed and the dominant source of structural disorder is propagated by large distributions of Si–O bond angles and bond lengths. Corresponding 23Na MAS and multiple-quantum MAS NMR data indicate that Na speciation is dominated by distributions of hydration states; however, more highly resolved 23Na resonances observed in some preparations supported the existence of short-range order. New structural elements are proposed to account for the existence of these Na resonances and an improved model for the structure of AIPs has also been proposed.