Pyrolysis—gas chromatographic determination of run numbers in methyl methacrylate--styrene copolymers using the boundary effect

By considering the effect of neighbouring monomer units in depropagating polymer chain radicals on the formation of degradation products, a new boundary effect theory was developed in order to elucidate the sequence distributions in vinyl-type copolymers using the corresponding monomer yields. This theory was applied succesfully to the calculation of the sequence distributions in methyl methacrylate—styrene copolymers in terms of the run numbers. The significance of newly introduced parameters (monomer formation probability constants) is also discussed.