Effect of pore size of packing materials on molecular-weight separation by temperature gradient interaction chromatography

Temperature gradient interaction chromatography (TGIC) is an interactive polymer chromatography technique varying the column temperature during the elution in a programmed manner to control the solute retention. In the present paper, the effect of the pore size of packing materials on the molecular-weight separation of polystyrene and poly(methyl methacrylate) standard samples by TGIC was studied by using the columns (octadecyl modified silica) with different pore size (100, 300 and 1000 Å) and eluent mixture of CH₂Cl₂/CH₃CN. By rising temperature gradient, both polymers were separated by molecular weight from lower to higher. It became clear that each sample elutes out earlier as the pore size is larger. These experimental results could be explained by the theory based on the scaling concept of Gorbunov and Skvortsov.