New Techniques for Preparing Plastics and Polymers by Microwave Sample Preparation


Abstract

Traditional acid digestion of many polymers have typically involved the use of a sulfuric acid char step in order to dehydrate the polymer and break the cross linkages. This is followed by a second step of oxidation with nitric acid. This is a tedious process and the sulfuric acid step raises the viscosity of the liquid which is not friendly to ICP-MS analysis. Other techniques such as dry ashing samples prior to taking up in dilute acids and very costly high pressure apparatus have also been attempted but each has their own difficulties.

We will prepare a variety of polymeric samples by traditional cost effective microwave digestion without the use of sulfuric acid or dry ashing steps. Analysis Completely Digested Sample will be reported using ICP-OES and ICP-MS analysis. Spike recovery data as well as data derived from standard reference materials will presented and discussed.