Interlaboratory comparison of average molecular mass and molecular mass distribution of a polystyrene reference material determined by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry

To evaluate the robustness of matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOFMS) for synthetic polymers, an interlaboratory comparison of molecular mass distributions (MMDs) measured by the method was carried out at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. Ten participants performed measurements on identical samples of polystyrene (certified Mw = 2423 ± 20) by using three different types of instrument at four different locations. Two-way and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that instrument settings and measurement protocols have more influence on the MMD than does the operator.