Hyphenated Technology Authors: Jia Yi Ling PerkinElmer, Inc. Selangor, Malaysia Tiffany Kang Joe Lee PerkinElmer, Inc. Taiwan Detection of Additive Used in Gloves by TG-GC/MS Hyphenation System Producing consistently high quality gloves with minimum cost has always been the top mission for glove manufacturers. The quality of gloves is associated with the raw materials used and its manufacturing processes. For this reason, understanding the various rubber additives and raw materials used and its application advantages has becoming very important. Glove manufacturing processes begin by mixing latex with latex compounding ingredients which include sulfur, zinc oxide, accelerators, pigments, stabilizers, dewebbing agent and antioxidant. The mixture is then leave to cure, before it undergoes glove dipping, vulcanization, and leaching process that produce stretchable gloves.

One of the additives commonly used in glove manufacturing is dispersing agent, which keep solid particles in latex dispersion from agglomerating or joining with other particles to form a cluster1. In this study, two glove samples formulated with and without dispersing agent are analyzed to see if a difference can be seen. Table 1. Hyphenation system experimental setup. Heat from 30 to 650 oC at 50 oC/min Sample size Temperature profile Transfer Line Program TL 8500 Pump rate GC/MS Program Clarus 680 GC GC column Temperature profile Scan range Ionization mode Results Figure 1. TG-GC/MS (Clarus...

It can be seen that the gas evolved are very complex, with major compounds detected at Retention Time (RT) between two to four minutes for both glove samples. However, it is not comparable to those eluted out from dispersive agent. This is because the major compounds detected in glove samples are mainly contributed by the decomposition of latex. As the content of dispersing agent used is very low, it becomes challenging to resolve the peaks coming from dispersing agent from those of latex gloves. Hence, two other peaks detected between RT between 11 to 12 minutes in the TIC diagram of dispersing...

Figure 6. Dispersive Agent – Mass spectrum of selected peaks at RT 11.205 min and 11.563 min. Figure 7. Blue glove – Peak monitoring at RT 11.205 min, m/z 121, 149 & 164, showing trace amount of dispersing agent detected.

Conclusions TGA is a useful tool when it comes to compositional analysis as it allows quantification of weight loss of a material at targeted temperature region. By hyphenating TGA to a GC/MS system, further identification of evolved gases can be carried out. In this case, TG-GC/MS hyphenation system successfully detect trace amount of additive used in glove manufacturing process. With minimum sample preparation, the TG-GC/MS serves as a much faster approach when it comes to sample differentiation, at the same time allowing a more complete thermal characterization of material. References 1. Vanderbilt...