The structure and proton tautomerism
of imidazole-doped cellulose
(Cell-Im), an excellent solid state proton conductor, has been studied
by 15N solid-state NMR techniques. 1H–15N HETCOR NMR experiments allowed us to assign the water and
cellulose–OH resonances and to establish 1H–15N connectivities. 15N CPMAS NMR experiments showed
that imidazole is immobile and its tautomerism quenched below 263
K, whereas at higher temperatures, a broad distribution of slow and
fast exchanging protons is observed, where the fraction of the latter
increases with temperature. The tautomerism is found to be coupled
to proton exchange with water molecules. From an analysis of the temperature-dependent
fractions of both phases, a broad distribution of energies of activation
of the tautomerization of Cell-Im is obtained, exhibiting a maximum
at 42 kJ mol–1 and a width of 8.2 kJ mol–1. The tautomerization is slower than in the case of imidazole dissolved
in wet organic solvents. These results indicate that imidazole is
located in an aqueous fluid phase between cellulose microfibrils,
where proton exchange is assisted by a fast molecular reorientation
in transient hydrogen-bonded imidazole–water complexes. The
implications of these findings for the mechanism of proton conductivity
of Cell-Im are discussed. Finally, the potential of Dynamic Nuclear
Polarization (DNP) enhanced 15N-natural abundance CP-MAS
NMR of these heterocyclic systems is evaluated.
In general, the results confirmed that mares' milk is a raw material with a unique chemical composition different from that produced by other farm animals.
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