CHARACTERIZATION OF MULTIBLOCK COPOLYMERS BY CHROMATOGRAPHY METHODS Vom Fachbereich Chemie der Technischen Universität Darmstadt zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades eines Doktor rerum naturalium (Dr.rer.nat) genehmigte Dissertation vorgelegt von Habib Patrick Richard YOBA-N’GOMA (M.Sc) aus Loubomo Referent: Prof. Dr. Harald Pasch Korreferent: Prof. Dr. Markus Busch Tag der Einreichung: 03.12.2009 Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 08.02.2010 Darmstadt 2010 D 17 I thank the Almighty and Saviour, The Lord Jesus Christ, for the support during my struggle time. I would like to express my gratitude to all the people who played an active role in the achievement of this PhD thesis. I thank Prof. Harald Pasch who gave me the opportunity to work in his group and who devoted me a lot of his time during my stay at DKI. I would also like to thank Dr. Wolfgang Radke for his assistance, advice and valuable contributions made towards this interesting and challenging research. His experience represented always high quality inputs to this PhD. His sense of humour will be missed. I am very grateful to Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst (DAAD) for the financial support. I am also grateful to all my past and present colleagues of DKI who made my stay at the institute so pleasant.