The confinement of poly(ethylene oxide) in graphite oxide is studied using a combination of diffraction, calorimetric, and spectroscopic methods. Polymer intercalation into subnanometer graphite oxide layers leads to the complete suppression of crystallization phenomena and dielectric α-relaxation processes, as well as a slowdown of β-relaxation modes. For the first time, high-resolution inelastic neutron scattering shows that poly(ethylene oxide) under these extreme confinement conditions adopts a planar zig-zag conformation, in no way resembling the characteristic 72 helical structure of the bulk crystal. The neutron data also shows a strong suppression of the COC and OCC bending modes and a distinct broadening of C–O torsional bands.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Spanish Ministry of Education (MAT2007-63681), the European Union (502235-2, SOFTCOMP), the Basque Government (IT-436-07), and the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council for beam time on the TOSCA spectrometer. FBB acknowledges a JAE-Doc contract from CSIC. FFA and SFP acknowledge financial support from the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council.

4 páginas, 4 figuras.

Peer reviewed