Metal-alkyl polymer bonds, number

Silicone Oils. Silicone refers to a siloxane polymer. The name itself derives from early research in which it was thought that oxygen was bound to silicon via a double bond such as found in a ketone. The simplest of these polymers are the poly(dimethylsiloxane)s. Poly(dimethylsil-oxane)s are made by hydrolyzing dimethyldichlorosilane with hydrochloric acid (9). Dimethyldichlorosilane is, in turn, made by the Rochow reaction. In this reaction, an alkyl halide (RX), methyl chloride in this instance, is treated with silicon metal in the presence of a catalyst (usually copper). The reaction results in a number of products that are separated by distillation (10). 

Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) are highly ordered molecular assembUes that form spontaneously by chemisorption of functionalized molecules on surfaces, and organize themselves laterally, most commonly by van der Waals interactions between monomers [5]. We consider SAMs to be a type of two-dimensional polymer they are, in a sense, a uniform supramolecular assembly of short hydrocarbon chains covalently grafted onto a macromolecular entity, that is, the surface. In SAMs, individual monomers (usually linear alkyl chains functionalized at one end or both) are not directly linked by covalent bonds to each other, but rather to a common substrate — a metal or a metal oxide surface. SAMs exist in a number of different types homogeneous SAMs on planar and curved substrates, SAMs on metallic liquids, SAMs on nanoparticles, mixed SAMs, and two-dimensionally patterned SAMs. Table 1 compares some characteristics of SAMs and conventional polymers based on bonding and structural type. 

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