Polybutadiene-graft-polystyrene copolymer: Grafting quantification by liquid chromatography at critical conditions using single UV detection

We propose a fast, reliable chromatographic method to determine the grafting yield of a Polybutadiene-graft-Polystyrene (PB-g-PS) copolymer synthesized in our laboratory for High Impact Polystyrene applications. We used Liquid Chromatography at Critical Conditions of PS to separate non-grafted PS from graft product and ungrafted PB. Separation between grafted copolymer and non-grafted PS was very efficient and thanks to linearity of UV-detector response, we could quantify the amount of grafted PS in the copolymer, as well as calculate the grafting yield. Results shown here are for DOW BR1202D high-cis PB and BASF CB529T low-cis PB, Luperox TBIC M75 initiator at 8 × 10−4 mol L−1 and 125 °C reaction temperature.