TY - CONF A1 - Falkenhagen, Jana A1 - Epping, Ruben T1 - Microstructure characterization of oligomers by analysis of UPLC / ESI-TOF-MS reconstructed ion chromatograms N2 - It is a well-known story that copolymers beside their molar mass distribution (MMD) can exhibit a functionality type distribution (FTD), a copolymer composition distribution (CCD), a monomer sequence distribution (MSD) and additionally different topologies within one sample. Small, often isobaric heterogeneities in topology or microstructure can usually not be simply separated chromatographically or distinguished by any common detector. Nowadays a wide range of different analytical separation techniques and multi-detection possibilities are available. The challenge consists in a clever combination of these techniques with a specific approach of data analysis. In this presentation different liquid chromatographic separation modes were combined with Electrospray Time-of-Flight mass spectrometry. The online coupling allows the analysis of reconstructed ion chromatograms (RIC) of each degree of polymerization. While a complete separation often cannot be achieved, the derived retention times and peak widths lead to information on the existence and dispersity of heterogeneities in microstructure or topology, that are otherwise inaccessible This method is suitable to detect small differences in e. g. branching, topology, monomer sequence or tacticity and could potentially be used in production control of oligomeric products or other routinely done analyses to quickly indicate deviations from set parameters. Based on a variety of examples e.g. the topology elucidation of branched EO-PO copolymers, the possibilities and limitations of this approach were demonstrated. T2 - Analyticon 2020 CY - Online meeting DA - 05.11.2020 KW - Microstructure KW - Copolymer KW - LC-MS PY - 2020 AN - OPUS4-51540 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -