• Korean Journal of Mineralogy and Petrology
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.31-40
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• 2021

The hydrogen in nominally anhydrous mineral is known to be associated with lattice defects, but it also can exist in the form of water and hydroxyl groups on the large surface of the nanoscale particles. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of 1H solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy as a robust experimental method to quantify the hydrogen atomic environments of amorphous silica nanoparticles with varying relative humidity. Amorphous silica nanoparticles were packed into NMR rotors in a temperature-humidity controlled glove box, then stored in different atmospheric conditions with 25% and 70% relative humidity for 2~10 days until 1H NMR experiments, and a slight difference was observed in 1H NMR spectra. These results indicate that amount of hydrous species in the sample packed in the NMR rotor is rarely changed by the external atmosphere. The amount of hydrogen atom, especially the amount of physisorbed water may vary in the range of ~10% due to the temporal and spatial inhomogeneity of relative humidity in the glove box. The quantitative analysis of 1H NMR spectra shows that the amount of hydrogen atom in amorphous silica nanoparticles linearly increases as the relative humidity increases. These results imply that the sample sealing capability of the NMR rotor is sufficient to preserve the hydrous environments of samples, and is suitable for the quantitative measurement of water content of ultrafine nominally anhydrous minerals depending on the atmospheric relative humidity. We expect that 1H solid-state NMR method is suitable to investigate systematically the effect of surface area and crystallinity on the water content of diverse nano-sized nominally anhydrous minerals with varying relative humidity.