Cold wall temperature effects on thermal field-flow fractionation

Thermal field-flow fractionation is a powerful tool for separating and characterizing lipophilic polymers. The construction of calibration curves is required for converting retention data into molecular weight distributions because thermal diffusion of polymers in solution is not well understood. Retention behavior is determined by the physicochemical properties of the polymer and solvent and should be independent of and apply to any thermal field-flow apparatus. Among these properties is the effect of the cold wall temperature which has been studied in some detail and found to be very important in retention behavior. In addition, temperature effects on thermal diffusion have been measured.