A review on the development of liquid chromatography systems for polyolefins

Polyolefins are the most widely produced synthetic polymer commodity and are found in countless applications ranging from bottles, packaging films to bullet-proof jackets, etc. Such widely different applications rely on high variability in the physical properties of polyolefins, which is a result of variations in microstructure, chemical composition and molar mass. Though polyolefins contain only carbon (C) and hydrogen (H) atoms, the microstructures of polyolefins are extremely variable, differing in the nature of the monomers (e.g. ethylene versus propylene), the degree of branching, chemical composition in the case of copolymers and finally their molar masses. Production, research and development of polyolefins require the analysis of polyolefin samples in terms of all these parameters. Development of efficient and robust analytical techniques based on the interactive LC is reviewed. The needed computational/theoretical studies to understand the retention mechanism in the newly developed chromatography systems are discussed.