Deuterium NMR Studies of the Solid–Liquid Phase Transition of Octanol-d17 Confined in SBA-15 Döller, Sonja C. Brodrecht, Martin Haro Mares, Nadia B. Breitzke, Hergen Gutmann, Torsten Hoffmann, Markus Buntkowsky, Gerd The interactions of molecules such as surfactants with solid interfaces are not sufficiently understood since their study is challenging with standard spectroscopic methods. In this work, octanol-d17 as a model system confined in the mesopores of SBA-15 is studied by variable temperature deuterium solid-state NMR, and the findings are compared to those of bulk octanol-d17. The magic angle spinning (MAS) as well as the static, nonspinning case, are investigated, showing that the described observations are independent of the applied NMR method. The 2H NMR spectra of both the bulk and the confined octanol-d17 show a large and a small quadrupolar Pake pattern below the melting point, suggesting a rigid conformation of the observed molecules with a 3-fold jump motion of the terminal CD3-group. Apart from the melting of the solid, no other phase transition is observed for either sample. The confined octanol-d17 forms a pore solid, exhibiting a melting point 38 K lower than bulk octanol-d17. The interactions of the molecule with the mesoporous SBA-15 bring about a distribution of activation energies for the melting process, resulting in a gradual melting process. American Chemical Society 2021 info:eu-repo/semantics/article doc-type:article text http://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_6501 https://ris.uni-paderborn.de/record/63947 Döller SC, Brodrecht M, Haro Mares NB, et al. Deuterium NMR Studies of the Solid–Liquid Phase Transition of Octanol-d17 Confined in SBA-15. <i>Journal of Physical Chemistry C</i>. 2021;125(45):25155–25164. doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpcc.1c05873">10.1021/acs.jpcc.1c05873</a> eng info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcc.1c05873 info:eu-repo/semantics/altIdentifier/issn/1932-7447 info:eu-repo/semantics/closedAccess