Macromolecular Rapid Communications, Vol.36, No.24, 2171-2175, 2015
Nondestructive Quantification of Local Plasticizer Concentration in PVC by H-1 NMR Relaxometry
The properties of plasticized poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC), one of the most important polymers today, are strongly dictated by the concentration of plasticizer. Yet, it has been impossible to quantify this concentration at different positions inside a PVC product without its destruction because of a lack of suitable analytical methods. Thus, this paper introduces a simple, fast, and efficient way to determine truly nondestructively the concentration of plasticizer in PVC by single-sided nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). With the help of correlation curves between the concentration of plasticizer inside nonaged PVC samples and the corresponding volume-averaged NMR parameters, single-sided NMR allows the quantification of the local concentration of plasticizer in aged PVC plates at different depths by spatially resolved relaxation measurements. The presented approach represents a fundamental step toward in situ characterization of plasticized PVC.