A Discussion Around Polymer REACH

Polymers are the material of choice in a wide range of applications such as packaging, construction, transportation, electrical and electronic equipment, agriculture, and medical and sports. The versatility of polymer materials is due to the fact that the physicochemical properties of polymers can be tailored by carefully adjusting the composition and molecular weight distribution of the molecules that make up the polymer.

Due to the potentially large number of different polymer substances on the market and because polymer molecules are generally considered to be of low concern owing to their high molecular weight, this group of substances has been exempted from registration and evaluation under REACH. However, analysts will face new challenges with the introduction of polymer REACH.

During his discussion, Bastiaan will share with you his industry-leading knowledge in multidimensional separation and its increasing applicability in the world of polymer analysis. Bastiaan will particularly focus his discussion on the separation of block copolymers.

Presenter: Bastiaan Staal, Ph.D. (Head of Laboratory, BASF)

Dr. Bastiaan Staal is a polymer chemist who finished his PhD in 2005 in the university of Eindhoven (the Netherlands) on copolymer characterisation by MALDI-TOF-MS. Since 2006 he is a lab leader at BASF, responsible for GPC and HPLC of polymers for the central reseach at BASF SE. His mean interests are; developing alternative methods in data processing for both HPLC and GPC (mainly handling nonlinear detectors), putting 2D chromatography (HPLCxGPC) to its limits, searching for stable conditions for doing proper GPC, unrevealing (MALDI) MS data of copolymers and hyphenation techniques like GPC-IR. His main drive is forming the bridge between theory and the industrial praxis.