flowmeter should perform well for most polymers encountered in GPC. Since the flowmeter precision decreases as the molecular weight of the polymer increases, and since GPC becomes more difficult at high molecular weights, problems with the flowmeter should occur only in extreme cases.The analysis presented here assumes that the cell delay constant, Kc (cf. eq 1), does not change with concentration or the power law constant. Experimentally, Kc does change but it is not correlated with concentration for the data obtained. Our experience is that the reproducibility of Kc for a given GPC system and flowmeter is such that overall flow measurement precision is about 0.2% (6).The flowmeter employed in this research is the subject of a pending patent and licensed to Molytek, Inc., for commercial use.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTWe thank Gene Rose for many useful discussions and assistance with the rheological measurements and Tom Chamberlin for helpful comments.LITERATURE CITED(1) Miller, T. E.; Small, H.