ABSTRACT:The thermodynamic interaction between cellulose acetate (CA) and solvent was studied by 1 H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and infrared spectroscopy. Three CA whole polymers (degrees of substitution, DS= 0.49, 2.46, and 2.92) and their fractions were used. Chemical shifts of the methyl proton in the 0-acetyl and of the hydroxyl proton in theCA molecule in various solvents were measured as functions of dielectric constant a, electronegativity !!. v of the solvent, the degree of substitution DS and the weight-average molecular weight M w of CA. Recently Kamide and his coworkers 1 -4 have studied in a systematic manner the dilute solution properties of cellulose acetate (CA) (degree of substitution, DS=0.49, 2.46 and 2.92) and found that the unperturbed chain dimensions A, defined as the radius of gyration of a polymeric chain at the unperturbed state (S 2 )6 12 devided by the square root of the molecular weight M, estimated from the solution data, depends strongly on the solvent nature, especially polarity. This phenomenon is very noticeable in polar polymers. The unusually large solvent dependence of the unperturbed chain dimensions has already been reported for cellulose, amylose, and their derivatives by Kamide et al.,[5][6][7][8][9] who analyzed literature data available. On the other hand, the existence of a hydrogen bond between the 0-acetyl group in the CA molecule and halogenated hydrocarbons 10 • 11 and the interaction between the 0-acetyl group and aniline or acidic solvents has been proposed 12 on the basis of infrared spectroscopic observations. These results indicate that there exists specific interaction other than the van der Waals force between and solvent molecules, influencing the unperturbed chain dimensions. Up to now, 1 H NMR spectroscopy has been applied to the CA molecule for (1) determination of its configuration, 13 (2) identification of the chemical shifts of ring proton, (3) evaluation of the average combined acetic acid contentl 4 and (4) determination of the distribution of acetyl group over C2 , C 3 , and C 6 positions. 15 • 16 Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy is also expected to provide a powerful tool for studying the interaction of functional groups in cellulose derivatives and solvents.In this paper an attempt is made to study the thermodynamic interaction between the CA molecule and the solvent molecule by 1 H NMR spectroscopy.