ABSTRACT
The earliest developments in polymeric packings for size exclusion chromatography (SEC) involved the application of lightly crosslinked, microporous soft gels, used with aqueous-based eluents, for the analysis of water soluble polymers (1). Although work continued to optimize such systems, greater attention was directed to developing stationary phases that would be compatible with organic solvents for the analysis of synthetic polymers. In 1964, Moore (2) introduced a range of rigid macroporous crosslinked polystyrene resins that proved to be successful in the analysis of a wide range of synthetic organic soluble polymers. Since that time polystyrene/divinylbenzene (PS/DVB) packing materials have continued to dominate in the field of organic SEC, although more recent years have seen the introduction of some more polar polymeric stationary phases for specific application areas. For aqueous SEC separations, the original soft gel packing materials have also given way to a new generation of highly crosslinked macroporous polymeric materials, although no single chemistry has proven to be universally applicable. Today, a wide variety of high-performance porous packing zv26 materials are commercially available for SEC, including both silica-and polymer-based media. This chapter discusses in detail the technology and application of polymer-based packings for SEC using both organic-and aqueous-based eluents.
