Oriented Nanoporous Host delta-Phases of Syndiotactic Polystyrene as a Tool for Spectroscopic Investigation of Guest Molecules

An efficient method to align low-molecular-mass molecules by enclosing them as isolated guests of the nanoporous host phase of syndiotactic polystyrene oriented films, is presented. This new method is compared with the classic method consisting in the absorption of low- molecular-mass molecules as a solute of amorphous phases of highly oriented semicrystalline polymeric films. It is shown that this new molecular alignment method provides a powerful tool to study in detail several features (spectroscopic properties, molecular motions) of relevant molecules, by separating with unprecedented selectivity their anisotropic spectral responses. The reported results refer to infrared and solid-state-2H-NMR spectra.