Ultracentrifuge as a Versatile Tool to Study Preferential Interaction of Polymers in Mixed Solvents

Abstract

Abstract Over the past five decades the analytical ultracentrifuge has been a versatile tool in the study of macromolecules and colloidal particles. Several textbooks [1–4] and review articles [5–10] deal with experimental techniques and theories for complete characterization of macromolecular species. However, the first published articles on the analytical ultracentrifuge dealt with the analysis of particle size distributions in suspensions of inorganic colloids. The emphasis has now shifted to organic polymers following the discovery that a large number of such polymers exist in nature. Before the development of the ultracentrifuge, the existence of such giant molecules was not recognized; the molecular kinetic units of proteins and of high organic polymers in solution were simply thought of as clusters of much smaller molecules, forming particles of undefined mass. Beginning with the elegant investigations of Svedberg [11, 12] on ultracentrifugation, such substances were revealed to be macromolecules, ...