Size exclusion chromatography of photo-oxidated LDPE by triple detection and its relation to rheological behavior

Sheets of low-density polyethylene (LDPE) were subjected to photo-oxidation in the presence of air using a xenon lamp to irradiate the samples for times between 1 day and 6 weeks. The formation of long-chain branching (LCB) up to one week of degradation and the competition between chain scission and crosslinking at longer periods of radiation were investigated by rheological characterization, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and the solvent extraction method (Rolón-Garrido and Wagner. Polym Degrad Stabil 2014, 99:136, Rolón-Garrido and Wagner. J Rheol 2014, 58:199). In the present contribution the same samples are studied by size exclusion chromatographic characterization using triple detection (concentration, light scattering and viscosity). The gel content is determined by filtration followed by the analysis of the soluble polymer fraction. The influence of photo-oxidation time on the molecular weight distribution (molar masses and polydispersity), the mean square radius of gyration and the intrinsic viscosity contraction factors is discussed. The results are correlated with the model parameters (β and fmax2) of the molecular stress function (MSF) theory, used to describe quantitatively the rheological data in uniaxial elongation. It is verified that LCB occurs as an aside process, which up to one week of degradation dominates over chain scission, before gelation plays a critical role. It is confirmed that the model parameter β correlates with the gel content, which reflects the competition between chain scission and crosslinking, while fmax2 is found to correlate with the experimentally determined contraction factors. By comparing the data of this study with those obtained earlier for polystyrene comb melts with well defined structure, the influence of the branching frequency (i.e. the number of branch points per 1000 carbon atoms) on fmax2 becomes evident.