The characterization of polymers in solution for molecular weight and size/structural information by size exclusion chromatography (SEC) is somewhat restricted by the requirement that the polymer must be dissolved in the mobile phase and have no interaction with the column packing material. More importantly, SEC cannot be used after the formation of polymer latex, polymer particles, or other supramolecular structures such as vesicles (polymersomes) and we must resort to batch techniques such as static multi-angle light scattering (MALS) or dynamic light scattering (DLS). Of course, these batch techniques yield very limited information about the distribution of molecular weight or size, and furthermore may give misleading information due to the weighting of the data by larger species. Field flow fractionation (FFF) is a technique which can separate polymers and polymer structures in solution or suspension and can be coupled on-line to DLS or MALS to get accurate size and molecular weight distribution information. We will show several examples of how unique analytical data can be obtained from FFF analysis of polymers, polymer latex, polymer particles and vesicles.

Polymer, particle, vesicle? The new challenge for analytical separation technologies in polymer characterization

255th National Meeting (2018)

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