Abstract
Stepwise pyrolysis of polystyrene followed by high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) analysis of the collected pyrolyzate provides information on the sample that is lost to pyrolysis—gas chromatography. In the case of polystyrene, the monomer, dimer, trimer, and related compounds are sufficiently volatile to be eluted from the gas chromatography; the higher homologues in the pyrolyzate are seen only by HPLC. HPLC thus becomes an additional fingerprinting technique and should aid in polymer structure elucidation, especially with cross-linked polymers, through identification of the LC peaks. Using chemical ionization mass spectrometry, over 100 compounds in the polystyrene pyrolyzate were tentatively identified. Mechanisms are proposed to account for the formation of these compounds.
Published Version
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