Branching Revealed: Characterizing Molecular Structure in Synthetic and Natural Polymers by Multi-Angle Light Scattering

This note provides a brief overview of basic principles of the detection and characterization of branching by means of multi-angle light scattering (MALS) detector. The most common methods that can provide branching information are presented and elucidated by means of real experimental results obtained with Wyatt Technology instruments. The abnormal elution behavior of branched macromolecules in size exclusion chromatography (SEC) is explained and the data acquired by SECMALS are compared with those obtained by asymmetric flow field flow fractionation (A4F). The comparison of SEC-MALS and A4F-MALS results proves superior A4F separation of large and highly branched macromolecules compared to their separation by SEC. For those who are more interested in branching topic the Application Note offers several recent literature references.