How to Work with GPC/SEC Data in Empower Software (Part 7) - Tip130

OBJECTIVE or GOAL

Welcome back to Get Empowered! In the last Empower tip-of-the-week post for Empower Chromatography Data Software, we learned about using Custom Fields when working with polymers (Tip #129).

In this week’s tip, we are going to continue our discussion on using Custom Fields as it relates to GPC/SEC. It would be helpful to review the following Empower tips on Custom Fields: Tips #82-90 and Tips #92-99

Let’s get started.

ENVIRONMENT

• Empower

PROCEDURE

Example 1: Does the molecular weight of a polymer fall within a specified range?

1. We can create a peak Custom Field, data type ‘Boolean’ to determine whether or not the calculated Mw for a polymer falls within a range. In this example, it would be 308100<Mw<=323900. If the Mw is within the range, Empower will report “Within Range”.

2. Once the data is processed, view the resulting Mw and it is within the specified range, therefore, Empower reports “Within Range”.

Example 2: How does the molecular weight of a new polymer compare to a known “good” polymer?

3. Often times we compare a new polymer to a “good” or “known” polymer by overlaying the chromatograms. We can make the comparison a bit more quantitative by comparing the Mw of the samples. This can be done with an Intersample Custom Field. Begin by giving the good sample a label in either the Sample Set Method or post run in Alter Sample.

4. A peak field, data type ‘real’ is created using the Intersample syntax. In this example, we compare the Mw of any polymer to the Mw of the sample with the label “good”.

5. Once the data is processed, view the resulting Mw for this sample is about 20% less than that of the “good” sample.

It’s that easy!

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

This procedure can be followed using the QuickStart or Pro interface.