Estimation of molecular weights of epichlorohydrin–bisphenol a polymers by gel permeation chromatography

Abstract During a program to evaluate the gel permeation chromatography (GPC) technique for measuring the molecular size distribution of polymers, three experimental epichlorohydrin–bisphenol A polymers were sent to Waters Associates for analysis with the commercially available instrument. The resulting distribution curves were used to calculate weight‐average and number‐average chain lengths of the samples. These values were found to give good straight‐line correlations with weight‐average and number‐average molecular weights measured by absolute methods. Thus the GPC method gives meaningful information about the molecular size distribution of polymers which can be used to obtain rapid estimates of molecular weight.