Current Mass Spectrometry of Synthetic Polymer

As the well-known soft ionization techniques, matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) - time of flight (TOF) mass spectrometry and electrospray ionization (ESI) MS are widely used in the investigative field of macromolecules including biomolecules and synthetic polymers since they were introduced in the late 1980s. Herein, emphasis is put on the application of MALDI-TOF MS and ESI MS on synthetic polymers by reviewing the literature in recent two decades. The applications to the characterization of synthetic polymers covering determination of molecular weight, structure analysis and quantitation by MALDI-TOF are reviewed. The combination with other analytic methods such as size exclusion chromatography (SEC) opened a new gate for the characterization of broad polydispersed polymers. The applications on different classes of synthetic polymers indicate that MALDI-TOF MS is ideal tools for the characterization of synthetic polymers.