Expanded Sequence Analysis for Acrylates by Pyrolysis GC

Wouter Knol has expanded the earlier developed methodology to determine the polymer sequence and applied this to the analysis of acrylates. His new method also for the first time allowed the sequence analysis of ternary copolymers.
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The sequence of copolymers describes the order of monomers in the polymer backbone. The sequence is typically determined using 13C-NMR. This method is not applicable to all copolymers however, in some cases no sequence specific are observed in the NMR spectrum, in those cases tacticity (stereochemistry) effects dominate. Acrylate copolymers cannot be sequenced by NMR and no alternative methods have been described for their sequence analysis. 

Wouter Knol drew upon his earlier work [1] and developed a sequencing method for acrylate copolymers using pyrolysis-GC. He was able to analyse the sequence ternary copolymers (containing 3 monomers) which had not been achieved by pyrolysis-GC for any copolymer before. These developments thus massively increased the sequencing possibilities for acrylate copolymers aiding in the development of future materials.

Figure 1. Detailed view of the trimer region of a MA-EA-BA tertiary copolymer. Here M, E and B refer to the MA, EA and BA residues respectively, = indicates the location of the double bond. Reproduced with permission from [2].

The work was recently open-access published in the Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis and can be freely downloaded here.

This work was part of the UNMATCHED project, which is supported by BASF, DSM, and Nouryon, and receives funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) in the framework of the Innovation Fund for Chemistry and from the Ministry of Economic Affairs in the framework of the “PPS-toeslagregeling”.

References

[1] Co-Polymer sequence determination over the molar mass distribution by size-exclusion chromatography combined with pyrolysis – gas chromatography, W.C. Knol, T. Gruendling, P.J. Schoenmakers, B.W.J. Pirok, R.A.H. Peters, Chromatogr. A, 2022, 1670, 462973, DOI: 10.1016/j.chroma.2022.462973

[2] Expansion of the application range of pyrolysis-gas chromatography to copolymer sequence determination: acrylate copolymers, W.C. Knol, S. Vos, T. Gruendling, B.W.J. Pirok, R.A.H. Peters, 2022, Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis, DOI: 1016/j.jaap.2022.105578

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