Syllabus
Sylabus: Lecture is intended to the students with advanced knowledge of polymer chemistry, who wants to understand the principles of the polymer characterization methods, to be able to select a suitable method for various practical problems, to gain the ability to process the data and to interpret the results with regards to the methods’ limitations.
1) Fundamentals Definition, molecular structure of polymers, molar mass distribution, averages of molar weight and methods for the molecular mass determination.
2) Size exclusion chromatography (SEC) Basic principle of the method, mechanism of the separation, instrumentation, solvents, columns, calibrations, detectors, SEC with the light scattering detection, SEC in multidetector arrangement, absolute and apparent molar masses, multidimensional SEC techniques. Measurements and data processing. Possible sources of errors. Applications of SEC.
3) Mass spectrometry with „soft ionization“ Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization with Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI-TOF). Basic principles of the method, ion sources, mass analyzers. Sample preparation, suitability of the used matrixes, linear and reflectron mod of measurements, spectra evaluation, polymer and copolymer identification. Additional soft ionization methods (ESI) and types of analyzers. Tandem mass spectrometry.
4) Field flow fractionation (FFF) Basic principles of the method. Used force field - asymmetric flow (A4F). Instrumentation, isocratic and gradient experiments, measurements and data processing. Advantages and disadvantages compared to SEC.
5) Gass chromatography (GC) Basic principle of the method, instrumentation, detectors, sample preparation, columns, derivatization, special injection techniques (headspace, solid phase micro extraction), pyrolysis. Qualitative and quantitative measurements. GC in polymer material analysis.
Annotation
Lecture is focused on the description of chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques used for characterization of the polymer materials. The principle of the methods, the importance in polymer analysis, trueness, precision and accuracy of the measurement, their applications and limitations will be discussed.