Combining an up-to-date insight into mass-spectrometric polymer analysis beyond MALDI with application details of the instrumentation, this is a balanced and thorough presentation of the most important and widely used mass-spectrometric methods.
Written by the world's most proficient experts in the field, the book focuses on the latest developments, covering such technologies and applications as ionization protocols, tandem and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, gas-phase ion-separation techniques and automated data processing. Chapters on sample preparation, polymer degradation and the usage of mass-spectrometric tools on an industrial scale round off the book.
As a result, both entrants to the field and experienced researchers are able to choose the appropriate methods and instrumentations -- and to assess their respective strengths and limitations -- for the characterization of polymer compounds.

Christopher Barner-Kowollik is currently Full Professor of Macromolecular Chemistry at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany.
He has published more than 260 peer-reviewed research papers and eleven book chapters. He serves or has served as a member of nine editorial boards of leading peer-reviewed journals and edited the 'Handbook of RAFT Polymerization' (2008, Wiley-VCH). Awards he has received for his research include the Edgeworth-David Medal of the Royal Society of Australia and the Rennie Medal of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute.

Till Gruendling is currently working as analytical chemist and lab team leader at BASF. His work involves the application and development of state-of-the-art mass spectrometric techniques for analytical problem solving in diverse areas of in industrial chemistry. He completed his PhD at the University of New South Wales under the supervision of Christopher Barner-Kowollik, Michael Guilhaus and Brynn Hibbert. Till Gruendling has published fourteen peer-reviewed research papers and has presented his work at international conferences.

Jana Falkenhagen studied chemistry at the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg. She received a Dr. rer. nat. from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. She was strongly involved in the development of two-dimensional chromatography of polymers and its launching in industry. Her main field of research at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) is the development of hyphenated coupling methods (LC-MALDI/ESI) for the characterization of complex polymers and copolymers.
Jana Falkenhagen is author and co-author of numerous peer-reviewed papers, 4 book chapters and holds one patent.

Steffen M. Weidner is head of the Polymer Analysis Group at the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM). He received his Dr. rer nat. at the Technical University of Berlin in 1996. He has published 55 peer-reviewed research papers and 3 book chapters. His particular interest is focused on the application of MALDI-TOF MS of synthetic polymers by developing suitable hyphenated chromatography approaches for efficient reduction of complexity. For the last 15 years, he is chairperson of the annual German workshop on polymer analysis by MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry.