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Menglu Chen

I am a postgraduate student in University of Warwick and major in analytical science. I come from China and finished my undergraduate degree in the East China University of Science and Technology. I majored in Fine chemistry in my first degree, the course I learned in my first degree is mainly focus on synthetic chemistry and chemical engineering, such as inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, principles of chemical industry, graphing of engineering and so on. In my second degree, I mainly learned analytical chemistry, such as Microscopy and Imaging£¬Mass Spectrometry£¬Chromatography and Separation Science£¬Electrochemistry and Sensors , Principles and Techniques in Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis and so on. I am interested in analytical science.

My research project

My research project mainly study on different determination methods for polymers , and try to find some relationship between viscosity and concentration of polymer solutions.

structure of comb polymer

In my project, a series of comb polymers with different Mn and Mw/Mn were detected by gel permeation chromatography (GPC) equipped with different detectors in both organic and aqueous phase. The Mn results were compared with analysis results from NMR.

A linear relationship between NMR and GPC (RI detector) was found, analysis and repeatability study shows the results are reliable.

The stability of comb polymers and linear polymers was tested in aqueous solution of pH 8.2. The results showed that all of these polymers can be considered stable during 16 days.

The relationship between viscosity and concentration of the linear and comb polymers was also investigated. Result shows that viscosity of high molecular weight linear PEG increase dramatically with concentration, while comb polymers change a little in viscosity with concentration.