Separation of parent homopolymers from polystyrene and poly(ethylene oxide) based block copolymers by liquid chromatography under limiting conditions of desorption—3. Study of barrier efficiency according to block copolymers’ chemical composition

• Block copolymer CCD influences barriers efficiency and so LC LCD separation.
• Each block molar mass also impacts the quality of separation in LC LCD.
• Barriers compositions have to be adjusted to improve LC LCD separation.

Liquid Chromatography under Limiting Conditions of Desorption (LC LCD) is a powerful separation tool for multicomponent polymer systems. This technique is based on a barrier effect of an appropriate solvent, which is injected in front of the sample, and which decelerates the elution of selected macromolecules. In this study, the barrier effects have been evaluated for triblock copolymers polystyrene-b-poly(ethylene oxide)-b-polystyrene (PS-b-PEO-b-PS) according to the content of polystyrene (wt% PS) and PEO-block molar mass. PS-b-PEO-b-PS samples were prepared by Atom Transfer Radical Polymerization (ATRP). The presence of respective parent homopolymers was investigated by applying optimized LC LCD conditions. It was found that the barrier composition largely affects the efficiency of separation and it ought to be adjusted for particular composition range of block copolymers.