Petr Lebeda

Recent development of the instrumentation for asymmetric flow field flow fractionation (FFF) brings new possibilities for the characterization of synthetic and natural polymers with several advantages over traditionally used size exclusion chromatography (SEC). The main difference of asymmetric flow FFF compared to SEC is that the polymer separation takes place in an entirely empty channel, which eliminates undesirable SEC effects such as shearing degradation of polymers with ultra high molar mass, anchoring of branched macromolecules in SEC column packing, and enthalpic interactions of polymer molecules with a stationary phase.

Asymmetric flow field flow fractionation is a type of field flow fractionation (FFF) separation technique. FFF has been co-existing with size exclusion chromatography (SEC) for several decades.