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To understand and improve network formation processes and performance properties makes structural molecular studies critically important for the coil-coating industry. Crosslinking agents such as hexamethoxymethylmelamine (HMMM) or less methylated derivatives, e.g. methoxymethylmelamine (MMM), are often added to industrial coating formulations. For molecules with considerably fewer atoms and accordingly less rotational freedom (such as MMM) it is readily accessible to identify principal conformations. Thus, an MMM conformer study is straightforward and serves as orientation concerning HMMM conformer studies. For HMMM molecules an extensive computation method was developed to investigate the conformational distribution average and probably most likely molecular structures. Using the density functional theory (DFT) B3LYP-D3BJ method with Dunning's correlation basis set, calculations were performed to investigate the three-dimensional structural geometries of HMMM (basis set cc-pVDZ) and MMM (basis set cc-pVTZ). Beginning with 1500 conformations for HMMM and using various cut-off filters we focused on final residual 22 conformers for solvent phase calculations and 16 conformers for gas phase calculations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that chemical properties for melamine crosslinkers were presented under consideration of conformational population distribution. Thus, computations of fully optimized structural geometries, energies and vibrational states indicate that preferred structural alignments for the methoxymethyl (MM) group in melamine molecules exist. Nevertheless, we suppose that as a matter of principle the MM group of MMM molecules can easily perform rotations by itself and all conformational structure geometries of MMM will exist. Concerning the MM groups position compared to triazine plane HMMM molecules have two main configurations,”3up-3down” and “4up-2down”, as dominant conformer species. Computations of weighted and averaged IR and Raman spectra of final conformations for HMMM monomers, dimers and trimers at ambient temperature are novel and in good agreement with experiment. Prediction of a final UV–Vis spectrum of top ten Boltzmann-weight and averaged monomeric HMMM conformers is in perfect agreement with practical measurement of commercially available HMMM.

Modified hydroxyethyl starch is photo-crosslinked in the presence of a green fluorescent protein (GFP) (mTagGFP) to obtain loaded hydrogels as model for a drug-delivery system. An important factor for the protein release is the crosslinking density since a dense network should lead to hindered diffusion. To obtain information on the rotational and translational diffusion of GFP in the hydrogel, mTagGFP is analyzed by fluorescence anisotropy and fluorescence recovery after photo-bleaching experiments using two-photon excitation. The mTagGFP shows a viscosity-retarded rotational and strongly hindered translational diffusion, depending on the polymer concentration. A comparison of anisotropy studies with mTagGFP-loaded microparticles and hydrogel disks allows the polymer concentration to be determined for the microparticles, which has been previously unknown.

Fundamental understanding of mechanisms of the epoxy−amine curing reaction is crucial for developing new polymer materials. Nearly all experimental studies, to date for elucidating its mechanisms are based on thermometric measurements and thus cannot provide the molecular level details. This study used density functional theory (DFT) methods to examine the mechanism of epoxy−amine poly addition reactions at the molecular level. Different reaction pathways involving both acyclic and cyclic transition state structures were examined for different reaction conditions, namely isolated, self-promoted by amine, catalyzed by alcohol, and in different solvents. The results indicate that the reactions catalyzed by an alcohol dominate the rate over the self-promoted reaction by other amine species and the isolated one in early stages of the conversion. The concerted pathways involving cyclic transition-state complexes are not significant due to their high activation energies. Calculated activation energies are withi...