Polymer Analysis

Modern life without synthetic polymers is unimaginable. They are found nearly everywhere including  packing materials, paints, cosmetics and even pharmaceutical products.

As quality control for the manufacturer, as a receiving control for further processing or during the development of these materials, MALDI TOF mass spectrometry is a fast method for characterization.
Commonly, the mass determination of polymers is performed using gel permeation chromatography. However, this method only gives relative values compared to the most often used polystyrene standard and therefore carries a high risk of inaccurate values.
For narrow distributed polymers, MALDI TOF mass spectrometry offers the possibility to measure absolute mass values.