MALDI-TOF masa-espektrometriaren erabilera polimeroak ezaugarritzeko

Resumen

Nowadays, techniques used for materials characterization provide a lot of information, but it is difficult to obtain complete information about structure. This information is very important and it is required to know more about the obtained material properties by these polymers. For polymers characterization, since Matrix Assisted Laser Desorption-Ionization Time of Flight Mass Spectrometry (MALDI/TOF MS) was developed, the use of this technique in different fields has increased exponen-tially.This mass spectrometry technique has spread for polymers characterization and, besides molar mass distribution, polymer monomeric units, polydispersity and end-groups can also be obtained.In this work, MALDI/TOF fundamentals are briefly explained: how mass spectrometer works, what is the importance of the matrix, which are the typical matrices... And some polymer characterization illus-trative examples will be presented. Specifically, twocharacterization processes will be shown: polysty-rene homopolymer used as a standard in Gel Permeation Chromatography (GPC) technique and Latemul, a comercial copolymer used as polymerizable emulsifier.