New evaporative light scattering detector for high temperature gel permeation chromatography

A new evaporative light scattering detector (ELSD) for the analysis of polyolefins by high temperature gel permeation chromatography (GPC) was recently introduced by Agilent Technologies. For the first time, we investigated the possibility to use this detector to measure the molecular weight distributions (MWD) of different type of polyolefines (polypropylene, linear, and low-density polyethylene). These samples were previously characterized by GPC with a differential refractive index (DRI) detector by several companies, in an interlaboratory study conducted by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.^[1 Luruli, N. 2010. PHASE 1: IUPAC SEC/GPC Round Robin Project Report: Repeatability and Reproducibility of Sample Preparation and Analysis in High-Temperature SEC, http://media.iupac.org/projects/2005/2005-011-3-400_rpt-phase1_110510.pdf [Google Scholar]^] The excellent baseline stability of ELSD as compared with DRI was reflected in a better reproducibility of the measured average molecular weights. More importantly, after applying required corrections to linearize the response of the ELSD as a function of concentration, we obtained similar results as previously obtained with DRI for the MWD of analyzed resins, covering typical applications of polyolefins.