6 Materialchemie
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The progress in activities on Microbeam Analysis under VAMAS/TWA 37 is reviewed. Particularly the liaison with the new projects within the ISO technical committee TC 202 is presented and discussed with respect to the possibility of identifying and launching related VAMAS projects. Need of more promotion for the engagement of more participants from industry and academia at national, European and international level is highlighted. Also, the competition with the other technical working areas (on 'nano' or materials-related) is critically discussed. Further, a short overview of the VAMAS areas of activities is given where Germany is involved.
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.
View into the depths of copolymer microstructure by a special approach of LC-MS data evaluation
(2019)
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. This is and will remain a challenge for analysts.
First a very short overview will be given concerning the common liquid separation techniques for polymers (SEC, LAC, LCCC, GELC) coupled to soft ionization mass spectrometric methods like MALDI and ESI-MS with focus on their limitations. For very broadly distributed samples or chemical very similar species the superposition of different separation mechanisms in chromatography is unavoidable or the separation efficiency cannot be optimized.
Different ionization probabilities and species of the same nominal mass with completely different structures are just two problems of mass spec of complex polymer mixtures.
Subsequently, different examples will be shown how these limitations in some cases could be outsmarted.
First example will be the separation of statistical EO-PO copolymers of different chemical compositions by end group functionality and the quantification of end group fractions over the whole CCD. Here an UP-LCCC / ESI-TOF-MS coupling is applied.
Further for different kinds of polymers it will be shown how it could be realized to obtain information on small isobaric/isomeric topological heterogeneities by coupling UP-SEC / ESI-TOF-MS.
All results are based on the data processing of reconstructed ion chromatograms of single mass traces of complex ESI-MS spectra.
From simple molar mass disperse homopolymers over copolymers to functionalized, 3-dimensional structures containing various distributions, the complexity of polymeric materials has become more and more sophisticated in recent years. With applications in medicine, pharmacy, smart materials or for the semiconductor industry the requirements for the characterization have risen with the complexity of the used polymers. For each additional distribution, an additional dimension in analysis is needed. Small, often isobaric heterogeneities in topology or microstructure can usually not be simply separated chromatographically or distinguished by any common detector. Instead of a complicated, time consuming and/or expensive 2d-chromatography or ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) method, that also has its limitations, here a simple approach using size exclusion chromatography (SEC) coupled with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI) is proposed. We used SEC for the separation because unlike other separation modes the separation in this mode solely should occur due to the hydrodynamic volume with no interference of other interactions. This simplifies the interpretation and the above mentioned heterogeneities should show a slight difference in hydrodynamic volume. ESI mass spectrometry can offer more than an access to mass dependent information like MMD, end group masses or CCD in polymer analysis. The online coupling to SEC 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 or accessible only by time consuming or expensive methods. Because these heterogeneities might vary with the molar mass, analysis of the whole MMD-Peak (here the total ion current (TIC)) would not lead to the desired information. The broadening of the chromatographic peaks in this case does not origin from the already well known band broadening factors in chromatography from diffusion. This band broadening is attributed to the nature and composition of the analyte itself. Surprisingly there is very little investigation into the peak width or peak shape due to analyte structure itself found in literature. It is also shown, that with proper calibration even quantitative information could be obtained. 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 we demonstrate the possibilities and limitations of this approach.