Challenges of Size-Exclusion Chromatography for the Analysis of Bottlebrush Polymers

The establishment of structure–function
relationships requires
the accurate characterization of the materials being studied. For
polymer science, size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) is among one
of the most relied upon tools. Herein, we investigate the use of SEC
for the characterization of structural parameters, composition, and
purity for bottlebrush polymers (BBs). The investigation comes in
three parts: the first section focuses on determining the five independent
structural BB parameters. The second section provides a systematic
investigation into the use of SEC of determining the composition and
purity of diblock BBs. The third section considers the sensitivity
of SEC to processing variations. This manuscript endeavors to raise
awareness of the challenges associated with SEC analysis and provides
practical information to improve the rigor of polymer characterization
to aid in the development of accurate structure–function relationships.