Water/Cosolvent Attraction Induced Phase Separation: a Molecular Picture of Cononsolvency
writer：左太森，馬長利，焦貴省，韓澤華，肖石燕，梁好均，洪亮，daniel bowron, alan soper, 韓志超，程賀
keywords：cononsolvency, neutron total scattering, all-atom simulation
source：期刊
specific source：Macromolecules
Issue time：2018年
Cononsolvency is a phenomenon for which the solubility of a macromolecule decreases or even vanishes in the mixture of two good solvents. Although it has been widely applied in physicochemical, green chemical and pharmaceutical industry, its origin is still under active debate. Here, by using combined neutron total scattering, deuterium-labelling and all-atom molecular dynamic simulations, we demonstrated that it is the strong water/cosolvent attraction that leads to the cononsolvency, both competitive hydrogen bonding and water/cosolvent complexation are its results. The combined approach presented here has opened a new route
for investigating the most probable all-atom structure in macromolecular solutions.