Poly(ethylene) oxide (PEO) is a technologically important polymer with a wide range of applications including ion-exchange membranes, protein crystallization, and medical devices. PEO’s versatility arises from its special interactions with water. Water molecules may form hydrogen bond bridges between the ether oxygens of the backbone. While steady-state measurements and theoretical studies of PEO’s interactions with water abound, experiments measuring dynamic observables are quite sparse. A major question is the nature of the interactions of water with the ether oxygens as opposed to the highly hydrophilic PEO terminal hydroxyls. Here, we examine a wide range of mixtures of water and tetraethylene glycol dimethyl ether (TEGDE), a methyl-terminated derivative of PEO with 4 repeat units (5 ether oxygens) using ultrafast infrared polarization selective pump-probe measurements on water’s hydroxyl stretching mode to determine vibrational relaxation and orientational relaxation dynamics. The experiments focus on the dynamical interactions of water with the ether backbone because TEGDE does not have the PEO terminal hydroxyls. The experiments observe two distinct subensembles of water molecules: those that are hydrogen bonded to other waters and those that are associated with TEGDE molecules. The water orientational relaxation has a fast component of a few ps (water-like) followed by much slower decay of ∼20 ps (TEGDE associated). The two decay times vary only mildly with the water concentration. The two subensembles are evident even in very low water content samples, indicating pooling of water molecules. Structural change as water content is lowered either through conformational changes in the backbone or increasing hydrophobic interactions is discussed.
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