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Characterization of Synthetic Polymers via Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption Ionization Time of Flight (MALDI-TOF) Mass Spectrometry
Published on: June 10, 2018
Copolymerization kinetics of methyl methacrylate-styrene obtained by PLP-MALDI-ToF-MS
Robin X E Willemse1, Alex M van Herk
1Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry, Department of Chemical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. tokunaga@cat,hokudai.ac.jp
Abstract:
The combination of MALDI-ToF-MS and pulsed laser polymerization has been used to study the propagation rate coefficients for the copolymer system styrene-methyl methacrylate. For the first time, complete information regarding mode of termination, reactivity of photoinitiator-derived radicals, copolymer molecular mass, chemical composition, and copolymerization rates is obtained interrelated. The polymerizations were carried out in bulk with varying styrene concentrations at a temperature of 15.2 degrees C by an excimer pulsed laser with varying frequencies. Both chemical composition distributions and molecular weight distributions were determined by MALDI-ToF-MS. The data were fitted to the implicit penultimate unit model and have resulted in new point estimates of the monomer and radical reactivity ratios for the copolymer system styrene-methyl methacrylate: r(St) = 0.517, r(MMA) = 0.420, s(St) = 0.296, s(MMA) = 0.262. Comparison between Monte Carlo simulations and the obtained results further confirmed the very successful combination of pulsed laser copolymerization experiments with MALDI-ToF-MS. The obtained results are believed to be the most accurate and complete set of copolymerization parameters to date.
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