POLYMER ANALYSIS AS A TOOL FOR QUALITY AS SURANCE

Polymer analysis plays an important role for characterization of raw m aterials and for quality assurance as also for recycling of plastics. It is reported on modern developments of polymer analysis using infrar ed spectroscopy and several chromatographic technics. Remarkable progr ess is obtained by critical chromatography and supercritical fluid chr omatography which give information on the composition of mixtures of p olymers and allows a simultaneous analysis of molecular weight distrib ution and sequence distribution of block copolymers and also of functi onality and type of end groups. A very new and extremely interesting m ethod is the matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionisation mass-spectrom etry which can be used for the analysis of the distribution of molecul ar weight and functionality especially in oligomers and relatively low -molecular polymers.