Patent ID: 6444979
Filing Date: 2002-09-03
Classification: G01N,H01J

Abstract:
A method of searching for an unknown polymer, comprising the steps of:separating a mixture of pyrolytic products obtained by pyrolyzing an unknown polymer into the pyrolytic products; detecting ion intensities of molecular ions and fragment ions produced by ionizing the separate pyrolytic products in each cycle for a predetermined period of time; adding sets of ion intensities of the molecule ions and the fragment ions detected in the cycles into total ion intensities; interconnecting maximum levels of the total ion intensities in a histogram composed of the total ion intensities arranged in the order of detection times thereof for thereby plotting a chromatogram; combining, for each ion of the same mass, the ion intensities contained in the total ion intensities making up peaks in the chromatogram into combined data of the ion intensities of the molecular ions and the fragment ions; generating a combined mass spectrum of the unknown polymer which is composed of the combined data arranged in the order of masses of the molecular ions and the fragment ions; and comparing the generated combined mass spectrum of the unknown polymer with a library of combined mass spectra of a plurality of known polymers which are generated in the same manner as with the combined mass spectrum of the unknown polymer, for thereby searching for the combined mass spectrum of one of the known polymers which falls within a predetermined probability percentage with the combined mass spectrum of the unknown polymer.