Solid State Analysis of Metal-Containing Polymers Employing Mossbauer Spectroscopy, Solid State NMR and F EI TOF MALDI MS

Polymers in general and metal-containing polymers in particular are often sparingly soluble or insoluble, in contrast to small molecules. Thus, special significance is attached to characterization techniques that can be applied to the materials as solids. Here, three techniques are discussed that give structural information gained from the solid material. Mossbauer spectroscopy is a powerful technique that may give information on the structure about the metal-containing moiety for about 44 different nuclei. Its use in describing the structure of the product obtained from organotin dichlorides and the unsymmetrical ciprofloxacin is presented along with the reaction implications of the results. Solid state NMR is also a useful tool in describing the structure of metal-containing polymers and its use is briefly described. Finally, MALDI MS can be used to gain structural information. For many metals it is particularly useful because of the presence of different isotopes that allow the identification of units through comparison of these isotope abundances with ion fragment clusters. Each of these tools can provide important structural characterization information.