Online GPC monitoring for batch and flow polymerisation reactions†

Abstract

Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC) is well established as the gold standard for routine molecular weight analysis of polymers giving both mass and mass dispersity information. Online-GPC has the potential to be especially effective when used to monitor the progression of reactions conducted in both batch and flow, within a single synthetic/analysis platform. However, use of this technique has often been limited to custom built systems which can be difficult to reproduce and to use. In this work we present a guide to easily modifying commercially available high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC)/GPC equipment, to facilitate their application as flow chemistry platforms with integrated online chromatography using commercial software for both instrument control and automatic analysis of multiple GPC traces. We demonstrate this approach as an entry point to conducting simple polymerization techniques using both batch and flow reactions with incorporated automated online monitoring. The work outlined should enable wider adoption of techniques such as online-GPC for real-time monitoring of polymerization reactions which in turn leads to real time data available for both reaction process and product control.