Determination of Surface Physicochemical Parameters of Styrene–Divinylbenzene Copolymer Modified by 5-Fluouracil Using Inverse Gas Chromatography

This paper is devoted to the determination of the surface properties of styrene–divinylbenzene (S-DVB) copolymer modified by 5-fluouracil (5-FU). This new research constitutes a further extension of previous works carried out on S-DVB copolymer modified by 5-Hydroxy-6-methyluracil and melamine. The vital interest of the system realized by the modification of S-DVB by 5-FU due to its applications in many important chemical, biochemical, pharmaceutical, and engineering processes influenced our choice to strengthen this type of study and to fill the gap that exists in this field. The powerful inverse gas chromatography (IGC) technique at infinite dilution was used to determine the various surface thermodynamic parameters of S-DVB copolymer modified by 5-FU by varying the temperature and the modifier percentage. The experimental chromatographic measurements of the retention time and volume of the adsorbed organic solvents on the solid surfaces constituted the key with which we open all the surface interaction parameters between the solvents and the solid materials. The dispersive and polar free energies, the London dispersive surface energy, the various polar acid-base surface energies, and the Lewis acid-base parameters of the modified copolymer were determined using the Hamieh thermal model and the new method allowing the separation between the dispersive and polar interaction energy. The new results were compared to those obtained with the S-DVB copolymer modified by other supramolecular structures such as melamine and 5-Hydroxy-6-methyluracil.