Abstract
A preparative fractionation of about 23 g of a commercial cis-polybutadiene rubber is described. The method employed was a solvent elution chromatographic method with very little temperature gradient. The molecular weight distributions of the fractions obtained were determined by an analytical fractionation of 20 mg of polymer. The method was similar to the preparative fractionation and involved solvent elution chromatography. The fractions obtained were assayed for quantity, molecular weight, and molecular weight distribution by GPC. The low molecular weight fractions of the preparative fractionation had molecular weight distributions which could be closely approximated by two log normal distributions, the low molecular weight component having the narrower width. The ratio of weight to number average molecular weight was found to be about 1.1 for these samples. The higher molecular weight fractions could also be approximated by two log normal distributions; however, in these fractions the low molecular weight component had a very broad distribution but constituted only a small portion of the sample. The widths of the GPC curves of the fractions correlate satisfactorily with the molecular weight distributions found by the analytical refractionations. The GPC width is a sensitive criterion of the width of the molecular weight distribution even when only two columns are used. It is felt that the analytical fractionation procedure presented gives more detailed information on the molecular weight distribution than is easily obtainable from an ordinary GPC curve.
