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Handbook of Size Exclusion Chromatography and Related ...

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solubility properties. They are used for many technical applications. A common<br />

property <strong>of</strong> these polymers is their poor or nonsolubility in many solvents (THF,<br />

toluene, trichloromethane, water, <strong>and</strong> so on). This makes GPC using these<br />

frequently used eluents unsuccessful. Good GPC analysis <strong>of</strong> these polymers can,<br />

however, be carried out using very special eluents <strong>and</strong> columns. Laboratory<br />

personnel performing these analyzes should be very experienced in order to ensure<br />

that valuable GPC results are obtained. When no practical experience is available,<br />

it is necessary to request expert advice. Customers in research <strong>and</strong> quality control<br />

are therefore invited to ask PSS, a long-st<strong>and</strong>ing developer <strong>and</strong> manufacturer <strong>of</strong><br />

GPC systems, for expert advice <strong>and</strong> customer support.<br />

An overview <strong>of</strong> theoretical aspects, methods known in the literature, <strong>and</strong><br />

PSS experience in the field <strong>of</strong> polyester, polyamide, <strong>and</strong> fluoropolymer analysis is<br />

provided in the following sections.<br />

2 THEORETICAL ASPECTS<br />

Polyesters such as polyethyleneterephthalate (PET), polybutyleneterephthalate<br />

(PBT), or the biodegradable polylactides <strong>of</strong>ten show a high crystallinity. This high<br />

crystallinity decreases the solubility in many solvents <strong>and</strong> so it becomes difficult to<br />

dissolve these substances completely. For this reason the solvents have to be strong<br />

enough to destroy this crystallinity. Hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP) <strong>and</strong><br />

trifluoroethanol (TFE) are the most frequently <strong>and</strong> successfully used solvents.<br />

Polyamides such as polyamide 6 or silk contain ionic functional groups<br />

(amides) that tend to associate via hydrogen bonding. These intermolecular<br />

associations decrease the solubility <strong>and</strong> increase the observed molecular size <strong>and</strong><br />

respective molecular weight. These associations must be destroyed prior to<br />

analysis. In order to destroy these associations <strong>and</strong> in order to perform satisfactory<br />

GPC analysis, the highly polar solvent hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP), containing<br />

0.05% sodium trifluoroacetate, is the most used solvent.<br />

Some fluoropolymers can be investigated using GPC. These polymers typically<br />

contain fluorocarbon groups <strong>and</strong> “normal” organic groups such as ether or ester<br />

functions or aliphatic groups. This makes some <strong>of</strong> them soluble in perfluoroalkylmethylethers<br />

(HFE 7100) or in HFIP. Unfortunately GPC analyzes performed in HFE<br />

7100 cannot be calibrated with commercially available polymeric st<strong>and</strong>ards. This<br />

disadvantage is related to the insolubility <strong>of</strong> these st<strong>and</strong>ards in HFE 7100.<br />

3 GPC METHODS IN THE LITERATURE<br />

3.1 Polyesters<br />

Most <strong>of</strong> the published analytical work in the field <strong>of</strong> polyester GPC was carried<br />

out on investigation <strong>of</strong> PET. PET was analyzed by GPC using meta-cresol at<br />

© 2004 by Marcel Dekker, Inc.

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