Patent ID: 7514516

Claim:
A polymer resin comprised of: linear polymers; non-linear vinyl polymers comprising from 0.1 to 50 weight percent of the polymer resin; and where said non-linear polymers have at least 0.06 branches/1000 backbone carbons, with said branches being measured using a heat polymerized polystyrene as a linear reference, said linear reference having from 0.0 to 0.06 branches/1000 backbone carbons and by: using a light-scattering detector to provide a measurement that is proportional to molecular weight and concentration; obtaining absolute molecular weight by using a light scattering detector and a DRI as the concentration detector; using a viscometer and DRI concentration detector to determine viscosity; and where the viscometer detector provides a measurement that is proportional to intrinsic viscosity and concentration, where said polymer has an average of branches/molecule (B n ) of from 0.15 to 1.5, and where B n is determined by: obtaining g′, the ratio of the measured branched polymer intrinsic viscosity (IV, b ) to linear (IV l ) polymer intrinsic viscosity, or g′=(IV b /IV l ); converting g′ to g, using g=g′ (l/ε) , where ε (epsilon) is from 0.5 to 1.5; using g to obtain B n according to the equation: g = 6 B n ⁡ [ 1 2 ⁢ ( 2 + B n B n ) 1 2 ⁢ ln ⁡ ( ( 2 + B n ) 1 2 + B n 1 2 ( 2 + B n ) 1 2 - B n 1 2 ) - 1 ] Formula ⁢ ⁢ ( 6 ) where B n is the average of branches/molecule; and where B n is obtained at each molecular weight M for a chosen log M range.