Towards early detection of the hydrolytic degradation of poly(bisphenol A)carbonate by hyphenated liquid chromatography and comprehensive two-dimensional liquid chromatography

The hydrolytic degradation of poly(bisphenol A)carbonate (PC) has been characterized by various liquid chromatography techniques. Size exclusion chromatography (SEC) showed a significant decrease in molecular mass as a result of hydrolytic degradation, while 'liquid chromatography at critical conditions' (LC-CC) was very successful for observing differences in functionality due to degradation, i.e. the formation of OH end-groups. To characterize and identify the observed differences semi on-line coupling of liquid chromatography to matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS) and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) has proved to be very useful. Comprehensive two-dimensional liquid chromatography (2D-LC) was also applied to study the hydrolytic degradation of poly(bisphenol A)carbonate. LC-CC × SEC showed that the formation of poly(bisphenol A)carbonate with OH end-groups occurred over the whole molecular mass range. This information could not be obtained with the separate liquid chromatographic techniques, thereby illustrating the usefulness of 2D-LC. The main degradation processes of poly(bisphenol A)carbonate under the applied hydrolysis conditions turned out to be disappearance of cyclic PC oligomers, chain scission of PC and (subsequent) formation of OH end-groups. FT-IR, SEC and LC-CC have been used to follow the hydrolytic degradation with time. LC-CC proved to be the most promising technique to detect the degradation of poly(bisphenol A)carbonate at an early stage. © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.