Accelerate your innovation with enhanced insight into polymer chemical structure

Today’s polymer scientists operate within an increasingly dynamic market space where a growing demand for high-performing materials, bio-material innovations, and intense competition create a heightened sense of urgency. With the ACQUITY APC System, chromatographic polymer characterization is no longer synonymous with long run times. Harnessing the benefits of advanced polymer chromatography means obtaining accurate and repeatable polymer molecular weight information anywhere between 5-20X faster than was possible with traditional GPC/SEC technology – allowing you to innovate faster while also improving your laboratory operations.

• Reduce laboratory turnaround times for polymer samples by getting answers to your development labs, your manufacturing operations teams, and your customers - FASTER.
• Drive innovation with faster results and more information so that your entire operation can respond more rapidly by decreasing development cycle times and accelerating time to market.
• Streamline process monitoring and achieve better batch control with the agility to make timely decisions “on-the-fly” about process and synthesis optimization.
• Significantly reduce the analysis cost per sample by reducing solvent consumption and waste disposal volumes.

Optimized method development through rapid solvent switching and aggressive solvent compatibility

Using APC with Polymer Quaternary Solvent Manager (p-QSM) technology provides chemists and polymer scientists with the ultimate flexibility to analyze the most complex polymer blends and additives using standard polymer chromatography, gradient polymer elution chromatography (GPEC), and reverse-phase LC with a single system.

Additional system features allow automated solvent selection of up to six different solvents. Automated column bank switching capabilities can also be paired with the rigid and solvent-resilient particles of the ACQUITY APC columns to achieve the world’s first truly automated solution for method development of size-based polymer separations. This supports separation of polymers in hours, instead of days.

Comprehensive Multi-Dimensional Chromatography

It’s all in the details – we make sure you can find them!

When combined with WinGPC UniChrom™ Software from PSS Polymer Standards Service GmbH, the Waters APC System enables researchers to gather an impressively high level of insight into their complex polymeric materials using a multi-dimensional separation approach - increasing the peak capacity of a single chromatographic analysis.

Applying a multi-dimensional chromatographic approach enables separation of analytes by two different, sequential retention mechanisms. The process allows for analytes to be separated from other compounds that would normally co-elute in a single dimensional separation.

The result is a dramatically enhanced multi-dimensional resolution and in-depth information into the chemical structure and composition of complex polymeric samples.

Column technology that keeps up with the pace of your research

BEH column technology

Ethylene Bridged Hybrid (BEH) Technology creates particles that ensure extreme column performance and long column lifetime under harsh operating conditions.

State-of-the-art reversed-phase
and HILIC HPLC columns

BEH columns are suitable for general purpose, reversed-phase chromatography and are ideally suited for method development due to their extreme pH stability and applicability to the broadest range of compound classes.

Using advanced detection to gather even more insights about your polymer samples

Equipping the ACQUITY APC system with advanced detectors can provide polymer researchers with valuable decision-making information through a single analysis.

Combining the Waters APC system with advanced detection solutions significantly increases information attainable from SEC analysis through addition of refractive index (RI), ultraviolet (UV) PDA, light scattering (LS) and differential viscometry (IV).

With third-party advanced detection integration options, samples under analysis can now be even more fully characterized to better inform the structure-property relationship of novel complex polymers.

Improve data and consistency with the industry's first dedicated calibration kits

With run times of less than 10 minutes, a bank of ACQUITY APC columns can be calibrated in less than 30 minutes using ACQUITY APC Calibration Standards.  These standard kits have been matched to the MW range of ACQUITY APC columns, generating a 10 point calibration for any bank combination in a simple dilute-and-shoot format.  A convenient tool helps to select the best column and calibration standards for a given application.  By enabling daily calibration of the column bank, data consistency is greatly improved to increase confidence in batch-to-batch measurements over time.

APC Column Selector Tool