Abstract
Recent progress in supercritical fluid chromatography (SFC) of oligomers and application of the individual oligomer homologs to polymer science are described. First, the feasibility of using a monolithic silica-rod column for the SFC separation of Silicone-OV17, Triton-X100, and isotactic poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) was examined. The monolithic silica-rod column showed higher separation efficiency in the SFC separation of oligomer homologs than conventional columns packed with silica particles (5μm).
Second, SFC was applied to the analysis of polyprenols extracted from bark, oot, leaf, and seed coat of a rubber-producing plant, Eucommia ulmoides oliver. The analysis clearly showed that the polyprenols from bark consists entirely of poly-cis homologs while those from root and seed coat consist of poly-cis and poly-trans homologs. Both SFC and matrix-assisted laser-desorption ionization mass spectrometry analyses of long-chain polyprenols from the leaves showed good resolution of poly-trans homologs up to 100mer. Third, applications of uniform isotactic and syndiotactic PMMAs obtained by SFC fractionation to the study of molecular weight dependence of diffusion coefficients and to the study of their stereocomplex formation are briefly mentioned.
