QUANTITATIVE POLYMER COMPOSITION CHARACTERIZATION WITH A LIQUID-CHROMATOGRAPHY FOURIER-TRANSFORM INFRARED SPECTROMETRY SOLVENT-EVAPORATION INTERFACE

Factors that are important to the quantitative analysis of polymer composition distribution by high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)-Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) using a solvent-evaporation interface are investigated. These factors include the effects of the location and distribution of the deposited polymer films, as well as the morphology of the deposit. Consideration is given to the influence of these factors on the chromatographic resolution and FT-IR spectral quality. Size-exclusion separations of polystyrene and poly(methyl methacrylate) in tetrahydrofuran are used to demonstrate the impact of these effects on the quantitative use of the resulting FT-IR spectra. Results indicate that all absorbance bands are not uniformly affected by spectral distortions, but that compositional information can be obtained on simple blends. The effectiveness of a post-sample-collection solvent-annealing procedure is also considered.