ABSTRACT:The spin-lattice relaxation time T 1 , spin-spin relaxation time T 2 , and nuclear Overhauser enhancement NOE were determined from nuclear magnetic relaxation measurements on five well-fractionated samples of poly-(n-hexyl isocyanate) in the range of weight-average molecular weight M w from 1:65 Â 10 4 to 5:71 Â 10 4 in n-hexane at 25 C. It is found that T 1 increases and T 2 decreases monotonically with increasing M w in the range of M w examined, As is well known, the spin-lattice relaxation time T 1 , spin-spin relaxation time T 2 , and nuclear Overhauser enhancement NOE for 13 C nuclei may be expressed in terms of time-correlation functions of components of the dyadic of the internuclear vector 13 C! 1 H from a 13 C nucleus to a bonded 1 H one if we simply assume that the nuclear magnetism of 13 C relaxes only due to the heteronuclear dipolar interaction.1,2 We have made so far experimental studies of T 1 and NOE for backbone 13 C of typical flexible polymers such as atactic polystyrene, 3 atactic poly-(methyl methacrylate), 4 isotactic poly(methyl methacrylate), 5 and atactic poly(-methylstyrene). 6 In the case of flexible polymers, tumbling motions of repeat units are hardly coupled with the entire chain motion, so that values of T 1 , T 2 , and NOE are almost independent of the molecular weight M except for oligomers with very small M. In the case of semiflexible polymers, on the other hand, the former motions may be considered to be coupled with the latter even in the range of rather large M, and therefore the dependence of T 1 , T 2 , and NOE on M must be different from that for flexible polymers. Unfortunately, however, such literature data for typical semiflexible polymers are not available except those obtained by Budd et al. 7 for T 1 and T 2 for poly(-benzyl L-glutamate) (PBLG). In the present paper, therefore, we examine experimentally the dependence on M of T 1 , T 2 , and also NOE for poly(n-hexyl isocyanate) (PHIC) as another example of semiflexible polymers. We note that DuPré and Wang 8 have determined T 1 , T 2 , and NOE for a PHIC sample with the weight-average molecular weight M w ¼ 3:39 Â 10 4 , and therefore have not examined the dependence of these quantities on M w .PHIC is a typical semiflexible polymer whose molecular characterization has almost completely been done by an analysis of dilute solution properties on the basis of the Kratky-Porod (KP) wormlike chain model. 9,10 Specifically, the KP model parameters for PHIC, i.e., the static stiffness parameters À1 , the shift factor M L as defined as the molecular weight per unit contour length of the KP chain, and the hydrodynamic diameter d, have been determined rather unambiguously.11 Thus, from a comparison of present experimental data with the theory previously 12 developed for the generalized KP chain [a special case of the helical wormlike (HW) chain] 10 by the use of the established values of the KP model parameters, 11 we may verify its validity. This is the main purpose of the present paper.A remark should be made ...