Introduction

This book introduces a variety of techniques to characterize polymers in solutions such as:

• Molecular weight determination by osmotic pressure, sedimentation, light-scattering, and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectroscopy (MALDI-TOF-MS) analyses.
• Molecular weight distribution by size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) and MALDI-TOF-MS.
• Conformation analyses by intrinsic viscosity and static light scattering (SLS) and dynamic light scattering (DLS) measurements including analyses of chain branching and chain stiffness.
• Analyses of aggregates by combining SLS and DLS.
• Stereo- and chemical-sequence analyses by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR).
• Determination of purity of cyclic and block copolymers by liquid chromatography at critical condition (LCCC) and temperature-gradient interaction chromatography (TGIC).

This book may be used by university students and researchers in industrial and research facilities to find ways to obtain the desired property of the polymer system quickly like a dictionary.