Molecular Dynamics and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Studies of Supercritical CO2 Sorption in Poly(Methyl Methacrylate)

Polymers (Basel). 2022 Dec 6;14(23):5332. doi: 10.3390/polym14235332.

Abstract

The study of supercritical carbon dioxide sorption processes is an important and urgent task in the field of "green" chemistry and for the selection of conditions for new polymer material formation. However, at the moment, the research of these processes is very limited, and it is necessary to select the methodology for each polymer material separately. In this paper, the principal possibility to study the powder sorption processes using 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, relaxation-relaxation correlation spectroscopy and molecular dynamic modeling methods will be demonstrated based on the example of polymethylmethacrylate and supercritical carbon dioxide. It was found that in the first nanoseconds and seconds during the sorption process, most of the carbon dioxide, about 75%, is sorbed into polymethylmethacrylate, while on the clock scale the remaining 25% is sorbed. The methodology presented in this paper makes it possible to select optimal conditions for technological processes associated with the production of new polymer materials based on supercritical fluids.

Keywords: molecular dynamics; nuclear magnetic resonance; poly(methyl methacrylate); supercritical carbon dioxide.