Ingenieurwissenschaften und zugeordnete Tätigkeiten
Filtern
Dokumenttyp
- Zeitschriftenartikel (1)
- Vortrag (1)
Sprache
- Englisch (2)
Schlagworte
- Reconstructed ion chromatograms (2) (entfernen)
Organisationseinheit der BAM
- 6 Materialchemie (2)
- 6.3 Strukturanalytik (2)
Eingeladener Vortrag
- nein (1)
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 homopolymers to functionalized, 3-dimensional structured copolymers, the complexity of polymeric materials has become more and more sophisticated. With new applications for instance in the semiconductor or pharmaceutical 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 isomeric heterogeneities in topology or microstructure can usually not be simply separated chromatographically or distinguished by any common detector, but affect the properties of materials significantly. For a drug delivery system for example, the degree of branching and branching distribution is crucial for the formation of micelles. Instead of a complicated, time consuming and/or expensive 2d-chromatography or ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) method, that also has its limitations, in this work a simple approach using size exclusion chromatography (SEC) coupled with electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI) is proposed. 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. Although some microstructural heterogeneities like short chain branching can for large polymers be characterized with methods such as light scattering, for oligomers where the heterogeneities just start to form and their influence is at the maximum, they are inaccessible with these methods. It is also shown, that with a proper calibration even quantitative information can be obtained. This method is suitable to detect small differences in e. g. branching, 3d-structure, monomer sequence or tacticity and could potentially be used in routine analysis to quickly determine deviations.