Morphology and nomenclature of polymers

The morphology of polymeric chains is often more complicated than the morphology of linear chains. Polymers can be branched, comb-like, star-Hke, ladder-like, macrocyclic, dendritic or cross-linked, when chains are linked 

There are at least three nomenclatures for linear polymers. The official nomenclature has been defined by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (lUPAC) and is based on the simplest repeating unit present in the polymers. However, for several reasons the lUPAC nomenclature is not the most commonly used. The most common nomenclature, which is presented in this chapter, is based on the name of the repeating unit resulting 

The precise name of a polymer is given by poly(repeating monomer unit). Examples of usual polymers are given in Table 1.2. 

Some singularities can be noticed. Poly(vinyl alcohol) is prepared not from vinyl alcohol, which is not stable, but by hydrolysis of poly(vinyl acetate). The 

Family Repeating monomer unit Side groups 

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