Abstract
This chapter describes the mass spectrometry (MS) and its increasing importance in polymer characterization. Vaporization and ionization techniques are being developed that make macromolecules fly with little fragmentation. Therefore, the advantages of short measurement and analysis times make mass spectrometry an important tool in polymer characterization. MS is the study of ions created as a result of ionization/fragmentation as determined electrically in the gas phase. The mass spectrum is a graphical representation of the ion abundance versus the mass-to-charge ratio of the ions separated in a mass spectrometer. MS is used to study the formation, separation, detection, and interpretation of ions in the gas phase. Modern MS, particularly with the advent of MALDI, is finally causing polymer chemists to be interested in MS as a structural analysis tool. But in the future, MS will join IR and NMR as regular techniques used by polymer chemists. Each technique has unique capabilities, and often a combination of more than one method is needed to solve complex problems in identification and chemical structure determination.
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