Characterization of polydisperse poly(vinyl chloride) by temperature gradient interaction chromatography

Temperature gradient interaction chromatography (TGIC) was employed to fractionate a commodity polymer, poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) with wide molecular weight distribution (MWD). The TGIC fractionation was carried out with C18 bonded silica and dimethylformamide (DMF) as the stationary and mobile phase, respectively. TGIC exhibited a high resolution to fractionate the PVC into the fractions with a narrow MWD comparable to the anionically polymerized standards. In combination with light scattering detection, TGIC is able to characterize the polymers with wide MWD and shows a good potential to be further developed as a new preparative fractionation method of synthetic polymers.