Proton NMR study of molecular motion in bulk and in highly drawn fiber polyamide-6

The proton motion in bulk and highly drawn fiber polyamide-6 has been studied by field cycling relaxometry and proton line shape measurements. The dips in theT1 dispersion allowed for the determination of the14N quadrupole coupling tensor. The fact that only one set of14N nuclear quadrupole resonance lines, has been found shows that all N-H groups in nylon-6 are H-bonded. A striking difference in the main line width transition and the low-frequency molecular dynamics has been observed between a slowly cooled “bulk” polyamide-6 sample and a rapidly cooled and highly drawn “fiber” sample by wide line proton nuclear magnetic resonance line shape and spin-lattice relaxation time measurements. This result is consistent with the picture that shearing melt processing procedures, such as spinning, plant stable and long-lived crystallization nuclei into the amorphous phase which impose additional motional constraints on the surroundings and inhibit the self-diffusion process.