Porous polymer media
AssigneeSandia National Laboratories
InventorTimothy J. Shepodd
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Highly crosslinked monolithic porous polymer materials for chromatographic applications. By using solvent compositions that provide not only for polymerization of acrylate monomers in such a fashion that a porous polymer network is formed prior to phase separation but also for exchanging the polymerization solvent for a running buffer using electroosmotic flow, the need for high pressure purging is eliminated. The polymer materials have been shown to be an effective capillary electrochromatographic separations medium at lower field strengths than conventional polymer media. Further, because of their highly crosslinked nature these polymer materials are structurally stable in a wide range of organic and aqueous solvents and over a pH range of 2-12.
Claims10
A method for producing a highly crosslinked porous cast-to-shape polymer structure in capillaries, the method comprising:
- preparing a mixture of monomers in a polymerization solvent, wherein the monomers include bifunctional monomers, and wherein the polymerization solvent has a conductivity of at least about 0.4 mho/cm;
- filling the capillary tube with the monomer mixture;
- polymerizing the monomers;
- and
- exchanging the polymerization solvent for a conducting liquid that can be a buffer solution by applying an electric field to the polymer.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.