Thermal behaviors of water in the poly(acrylic acid) (PAA)/water mixtures with 0.1 M NaCl, HCl, and NaOH were investigated by DSC. It showed that adding ions in the mixtures affected the crystallization of water evidently. Compared with the PAA/water mixtures, the Tm of freezable bound water in the mixtures with ions moved to lower values and varied with different cations and anions, due to the stabilization or destabilization of the hydrogen-bonding hydration between polymers and water molecules through ionic hydration. The content of non-freezable bound water in the non-crystalline phase of the PAA/water mixtures with ions was not constant, it increased with total water content gradually, owing to the more binding sites created by ions. The ions could change the distribution of different states of water in the polymer aqueous solutions evidently.
Keywords: bound water; poly(acrylic acid); differential scanning calorimetry; ions