New Automated Cross-fractionation Instrument

Polymer Char (Spain) has developed a compact, robust and automated instrument for measuring the bivariate distribution by TREF fractions and subsequent online GPC analysis of the fractions in a single experiment,
under full computer control.

The polymer is fractionated by TREF and fractions are automatically injected into the GPC columns. After that an infrared detector is used to obtain the molar mass distribution of each fraction. Then, a 3D plot in temperature and Log MW axis is generated by the software with these results. Besides of the whole view of the results by the three-dimensional plot, both the recovered TREF and GPC profiles from the parent sample are calculated too, which a high precision comparing them with TREF and GPC curves obtained by our TREF 300 and our GPC-IR.

TREF fractions can be taken at any temperatures (including subambient down to -20ºC), being possible to adapt the operation to the sample analyzed in order to optimize resolution and analysis time. Five samples can
be analyzed unattendedly in a fully automated process with no solvents handling, taking about 12 hours per sample under standard conditions.