Combining Advanced Polymer Chromatography with Advanced Detection for Complete Polymer Characterization

In recent years, new developments in the area of size exclusion chromatography have resulted in the introduction of Ultra High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (UHPLC or UPLC®) with Waters ACQUITY Advanced Polymer Chromatography (APC™) a breakthrough technology that is able to provide SEC analyses of polymeric materials with higher-resolution and higher-speed than conventional SEC.. However, the APC system is limited to conventional calibration, meaning it can only generate relative molecular weight information. In order to obtain comprehensive knowledge of the polymers under analysis, it is necessary to combine the high-resolution APC system with additional advanced detectors such as Malvern Panalytical's OMNISEC REVEAL. The combination of the OMNISEC-REVEAL multi-detector system with the APC System provides high quality, high-resolution and rapid sample analysis. The presence of the highly sensitive LS and RI detectors and the viscometer in the OMNISEC REVEAL system allowed for the calculation of absolute molecular weight, hydrodynamic radius and structure of the materials. In this study, the analyses of several polymers by Waters APC combined with the Malvern Panalytical OMNISEC REVEAL multi-detector system are presented and discussed in order to demonstrate the benefits of combining the two systems.