ABSTRACT
Pyrolysis gas chromatography (PGC) involves the use of a pyrolyzer and a gas chromatography instrument. By using the pyrolyzer, which is set at a specific temperature or operated according to a temperature program, a long polymer chain is rapidly cleaved into small molecular fragments under an inert atmosphere. PGC is often coupled with a mass spectrometry (MS) instrument, furnishing PGC–MS, where MS functions as the detector for pyrolysates. It is crucial to obtain information about the pyrolysis patterns of different polymers for the identification and analysis of their structures and fragments. Pyrograms are similar to chromatograms, where peak intensity is plotted versus retention time. In a chromatogram, each peak represents a component in a mixture, while even in a pyrogram of a pure polymer; each peak only represents a polymer fragment, with all peaks completely representing the polymer.
