ABSTRACT
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Gel permeation chromatography (GPC) first established itself as the method of choice for the analysis of synthetic polymers and, to a far lesser extent, of high-molecular-weight biopolymers. That situation has changed substantially in the recent past, as the speed and efficiency of gel permeation columns has permitted the fractionation of compounds of lower molecular weights. Still, no discussion of GPC would be complete without a thorough discussion of the nature of polymers and of the information about the composition of polymeric analytes that can be extracted in a few minutes by GPC. This chapter will cover all aspects of gel permeation chromatography, beginning with a full description of the nature of polymers.
