Stereoregularity, Molecular Dynamics, and Unusual Crystallinity of Hydrogenated Polynorbornenes: Configurational Disorder*

Solid-state NMR spectroscopy can be used to study both the structure and dynamics of macromolecular systems that exhibit different degrees of order to understand the fundamental properties of materials. One such point of interest is to determine the difference of a polymer’s structure, local dynamics and phase transition between various isomers of semicrystalline polymers. Recently, a thorough study on stereospecific ring-opening metathesis polymerization has been conducted on norbornenes making the synthesis and the study of hydrogenated polynorbornene (hPNB) stereoisomers possible. The unique local dynamics, phase strucutre, and phase transition of atactic- syndiotactic- and isotactic-hPNBs will be shown and their relationships will be discussed.