Liquid Chromatographic Fractionations of Mixtures of Polystyrene Oligomers

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Abstract
Oligomer mixtures of 800, 2200, and 4000 molecular weight polystyrene have been fractionated using silica and bonded phase columns under similar conditions of solvent gradient and flow rate. Using a hexane tetrahydrofuran gradient, the silica and nitro phases were best in that they separated 41 and 43 oligomers, respectively. At the other extreme, a phenyl bonded phase column gave virtually no resolution using a water/THF gradient, and a cyano bonded phase column, using the earlier hexane/tetrahydrofuran system, resolved only 10 oligomers. Amino and octadecyl bonded phase columns gave results intermediate between these two extremes. The strength of the solvent used to dissolve the sample was found to be of critical importance. Use of too good a sample solvent seriously degraded the attainable resolution. When number-average and weight-average molecular weights for an 800 molecular weight polystyrene sample were calculated from the oligomer distribution, the silica column gave values which were most consistent with those reported from other methods.