Polymers, inorganic characterisation

This chapter initially provides an overview of the considerations associated with the synthesis of inorganic polymers and the reasons why inorganic rings are so important as polymer precursors. The methods commonly used to characterise polymers are then discussed. As in Chapter 3, which describes the techniques used for the characterisation of inorganic rings, this section focuses on utility rather than on theoretical and practical details of the different methods. The reader is referred to a variety of texts for further details about these polymer structural characterisation techniques. ... 

FAB-MS has been used for the analysis of lubricant additives, thermally labile or involatile organic compounds, such as macromolecules and dyes, and inorganic compounds. Cationic dyes and dye intermediates, which are typically acid salts, readily yield preformed ions in the FAB matrix solution. They are also very difficult to address by other MS ionisation methods due to their involatility. Lay and Chang [85] used positive ion FAB to characterise a mixture of amine and ketimine cross-linking agents for polymer coatings. Bentz et al. 

One dimensional conjugated carbon polymers can occur in many configurations as depicted in Figure 2 where also we included some chains with nitrogen and sulfur for later reference. Also included there are inorganic one dimensional semiconductors, like SbSI and SbSBr for later comparison. Besides the depicted one-dimensional system others like TCNQ- and KCP-salts could be included here as well but rough measurements of their nonlinear coefficients gave deceptively small values which combined with their ill-characterisation make them poor candidates for nonlinear optical devices. 

Fowkes FM. Quantitative characterisation of the acid-base properties of solvents, polymers, and inorganic surfaces. J Adhesion Sci Technol 1990 4 669-691. 

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