Modern material based on polymers could be very complex. The polymer itself could be a blend or a copolymer, several additives for special material behaviour are added.
Some of these additives could be very complex or polymers too (steric hindered amines: HALS)
Very often application problems result from the additives, not from the polymers themselves. Therefore it's very important to identify and quantify these additives with fast and reliable analyses, best within one chromatographic run.
If the concentration of the additives is in percent (%), it is possible to run a GPC/SEC-FTIR coupling to identify and quantify the polymers and additives directly. However, when the amount of additive is not sufficient for a direct analysis, an extraction of the additives is necessary.
To shorten the extraction time the sample has to be pulverized. Previous analyses have shown that the polymer chains will not undergo degradation upon pulverization. The first examples show the results of a direct hightemperature GPC-FTIR coupling.