| Abstract: | Investigations of ten poly(ethylene glycol) samples with molecular weights of 62 to 20 000 showed that inverse gas chromatography is a sensitive tool to determine molecular weight dependent variations of thermodynamic parameters like specific retention volume, activity coefficient, and Flory-Huggins interaction parameter. As mobile phase 27 probe molecules with various functional groups could be characterized with respect to their solubility behaviour for the oligomers and polymers due to the ability to form hydrogen bonds. By application of the factor analysis technique two factors could be extracted from the data matrix of retention values. The best fit of the corresponding simple structure was achieved with a combination of group concentrations of the terminal OH-group and the repeating ether unit of the poly(ethylene glycol)s. |
