Nuclear magnetic resonance - Characterization of self-assembled nanostructured materials

Self-assembly has been widely used for the preparation of novel nanostructu red materials. To both accelerate the dynamics of this processing route and develop new nanostructures, it is critical to understand the attendant int erfacial interactions that occur in solution between the different precurso r components, and how such molecular level interactions affect nanostructur ed ordering. Extensive discussions of experimental techniques for character izing nanoscale materials, such as small-angle X-ray or neutron scattering, high-resolution electron microscopy, and surface force microscopy can be f ound elsewhere.([l]) This review will focus on nuclear magnetic resonance ( NMR) methods, which are sensitive to local chemical environments and provid e complementary information on the molecular scale, in contrast to other an alytical techniques. The first section provides a brief introduction to fun damental NMR principles and their applications. It is followed by examples to illustrate how NMR can be used to derive information related to long-ran ge ordering on the nanometer scale, the molecular conformation on a sub-nan ometer scale, and their correlation to interfacial binding.