Barrier characteristics of metallocene polyolefins to organic vapors

A Waters 150-C ALC Gel Permeation Chromatograph was employed to characterize Affinity 1140 (metallocene) and Attane 4201 (ULDPE) films by their Molecular Weight Distributions. It was also used to obtain the weight average molecular weight, the number average molecular and the dispersion index of the selected films.; Data to calculate the diffusion and solubility coefficients was obtained using the CAHN D-200 Digital Recording Balance with ethyl acetate and limonene as the organic vapors. This study focused on the effects of the sorbates at 23{dollar}spcirc{dollar}C and 32{dollar}spcirc{dollar}C; the values gained were evaluated to determine if there were significant differences between the sorption processes of the samples. For each experimental sorption plot produced by the Digital Balance, a second plot was calculated by the Fickian model to establish the Fickian behavior of the selected polymers. A few of the metallocene and slightly more of the ULDPE tests resulted in what appeared to be dual sorption but the majority of the plots had good agreement, which proved the Fickian nature.