Full-spectrum mid-infrared FTIR is a powerful technique for determining structural and compositional information of polymers. Hyphenating GPC size separation with FTIR analyzer through an automated solvent removing interface allows compositional and structural characterization throughout the separation process of a complex polymeric mixture. GPC-FTIR was used to characterize copolymer samples of SBR, SEBS, Copovidone PVP/VA, and PLGA for compositional variations across MW distributions. Significant amount of compositional drifts were observed for SBR, Copovidone PVP/VA samples, smaller levels of compositional drifts for SEBS while no compositional drift for PLGA copolymer. GPC-IR was also used to investigate a complicated copolymer system based on PMMA/BA (~6:1 ratio) main backbone but incorporated with small amount of methacrylic acid, styrene and DAAM comonomers to improve various copolymer properties. Different patterns of compositional heterogeneity of copolymers with the 3-5 comonomers were found for structure-property correlation study. GPC-IR hyphenated technology is well suited to characterize copolymer compositional drifts, lot-to-lot / supplier-to-supplier variations, polymer modification and polymer degradation from thermal processing.

Characterizing copolymer compositional heterogeneity by GPC-FTIR combined system

243rd National Meeting (2012)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.