Chapter 2: Application of STD NMR in Organic/Inorganic Polymer Materials

Although saturation transfer difference (STD) NMR spectroscopy was developed with the aim of detecting the binding of small molecules to target receptor proteins, it has increasingly been applied to a wider range of materials, including synthetic polymers, colloidal dispersions and inorganic nanoparticles. Here the STD NMR technique is briefly described, and some applications of STD NMR in organic/inorganic polymer materials are introduced. STD NMR has been used for several motivations: to detect the binding sites of small molecules bound specifically to polymers, to search for different types of substances that have a high affinity for polymer beads, and to determine the binding mode and the dissociation constant of small molecules bound to colloidal dispersions or nanoparticles in aqueous solution.