(291e) Challenges and Limitations of SEC for the Characterization of Polymers
AIChE Annual Meeting
2021
2021 Annual Meeting
Materials Engineering and Sciences Division
Area Plenary 1: Emerging Areas in Polymer Science and Engineering (Invited Talks)
Tuesday, November 9, 2021 - 2:30pm to 3:00pm
The establishment of structureâfunction relationships for a given material require the accurate characterization of the materials structural properties. In polymer science, size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) is among one of the most relied upon tools for characterization. I will present the investigation of the use of SEC for the characterization of structural parameters, composition, and purity of bottlebrush polymers and block copolymers. The investigation comes in three parts: the first section focuses on five independent structural parameters defined for a bottlebrush polymer. A Monte-Carlo simulation mimicking the bottlebrush synthesis was developed to better understand the precision of their synthesis dependent on the defined structural parameters. The second section provides a systematic investigation into the use of SEC for determining the composition and purity of di-block polymers. Third section considers the sensitivity of SEC to variations in processing of the raw data produced by the SEC system. Through this presentation we endeavor to raise awareness of the challenges associated with the SEC analysis and provide practical information to improve the rigor of polymer characterization. This will aid in the development of accurate structureâfunction relationships for any designed material in the future.