Characterization of synthetic high-polymers and natural organic compounds by reactive pyrolysis gas chromatography

In this paper, some features of reactive pyrolysis-gas chromatography (reactive Py-GC) in the presence of various chemical reagents, such as an organic alkali or solid acid, are first presented. Then, typical applications of the reactive Py-GC to compositional analysis and a microstructural characterization of various synthetic high-polymers and natural organic compounds are overviewed. These applications include; 1) the determination of end groups and the chemical composition of polycarbonates; 2) the determination of cationic comonomers in polyacrylamide resins; 3) a study of the degradation mechanism of fully aromatic polyesters during reactive pyrolysis in the presence of an organic alkali; 4) the determination of rosin sizing agents in paper; 5) the determination of lipid components contained in a single zooplanter individual; and 6) the evaluation of sequence distributions of thermally stabilized polyacetals. All of these applications made significant contributions to opening up new practical methods to characterize the chemical composition and microstructure of engineering plastics and natural organic compounds to which conventional analytical methods often encountered various difficulties: 1) insufficient sensitivity for a trace amount of available samples weighing on the mu g order, 2) the requirement of time-consuming, and loss and/or contamination-causing pretreatment of samples, and/or 3) insufficient solubility of samples in most solvents for spectroscopic measurements. Furthermore, the future scope of reactive PI-GC is briefly discussed.