Polymer field rapid developments

The first systematic study of the irradiation of polymers was undertaken by Dole and Rose during the period 1947-1949. These workers discovered that irradiation of polyethylene caused some degradation to low molecular weight products and the introduction of unsaturation in the polymer chains, but by far the most exciting discovery was that cross links were formed between polymer chains and this had a profound effect on the stress-strain curves and the colddrawing properties of polyethylene(57-59). In 1952 Charlesby(60) published the first of many papers on the effects of radiation on polymers. The rapid development of the field upto 1960 is reviewed in books by Charlesby (61) and Chapiro (62). 

In Chapter 3, Mitchell and Windle give a critical account of the assessment of orientation in liquid crystalline polymers, a rapidly developing new field in which they have played a leading part. 

Later, this field rapidly developed as volume transition of pol3mier gels. The authors also studied molecular-level understanding of the volume transition of polymer gels [13]. We concluded that the balance... 

Interest in the chemistry of water-soluble polymers (polyelectrolytes) has been continually increasing during the past 45 years. The tremendous scope of utility for water-soluble polymers has led to a vigorous search for new materials and the rapid development of polyelectrolytes into a dynamic field of industrial research. Growth in this field has been especially rapid since 1960 and today, many companies are engaged in synthesis and applications research on polyelectrolytes that are primarily used in four main marketing areas water treatment, paper, textiles, and oil recovery [1]. Polyacrylamide gel was also used as soil conditioner [2-4]. 

The development of methods and instrumentation, especially in the high field range, will already open up quite new areas of uses already in the near future. These may at least partly replace and complete solid-state vibration spectroscopy in the polymer field in cases where the amount of material is not the limiting factor. As far as we are able to predict the future, the development of exact quantitative methods of analysis, in particular, will rapidly develop to a high degree of accuracy. 

The final chapter, by Peter Pickup of Memorial University of Newfoundland, gives a comprehensive account of the major and rapidly developing field of the electrochemistry of electronically conducting polymers and their applications. Following the discovery of these materi-... 

In this review, the state of the art of the bridging of the gap between quantum chemical, atomistic, coarse-grained (and almost macroscopic) models of polymers has been discussed. Simulations with coarse-grained models provide the promise of the equilibration of models of dense amorphous polymers, whereas such equilibration is extremely difficult if the models are expressed in fully atomistic detail. The review presents the status of this rapidly developing field as of the beginning of 1998. A few minor additions were incorporated in the page proof, early in 2000, in response to suggestions from the reviewer. 

The present volume gives a general and at the same time rather detailed review on main research developments in the field of dendrimers (oligomer and polymer) during the past several years, but also offers views and visions of the future - of what could soon be achieved in this area at the interface between small organic molecules and macromolecules (polymers). We are sure that the rapid development of fractal-shaped molecules will continue in academic institutes as well as in industry - there is still more to come. 

All of the selected contributions that are present in these special volumes are good representatives for manifesting the importance of the concepts based on conformation-dependent sequence design. It has been our intention to provide the scientific and industrial polymer community with a comprehensive view of the current state of knowledge on designed polymers. Both volumes attempt to review what is currently known about these polymers in terms of their synthesis, chemical and physical properties, and applications. We will feel the volumes have been successful if some of the chapters presented here stimulate readers to become interested in and solve specific problems in this rapidly developing field of research. 

It is difficult to exhaustively cover the vast, exciting, and rapidly developing field of enzymology of plant biopolymers in a short introductory review. However, the chapters that follow this introduction will deal in depth with various aspects of eiu mology of plant polymers. Potential applications and improvements are many and through dedicated research and development efforts new industrial eiu me-based processes can become a reality in the future. 

The surprising discovery that small oligo-P-peptides exhibit extraordinary tendencies to form stable secondary structures has led to rapid developments in the chemistry of these peptides. The earliest work in the field revolved around the synthesis of P-peptide polymers (the so-called nylon-3 derivatives). 2 Polymerization of P-amino acids led to polymers of undefined length. It was noted they could form stable structures but it proved impossible to gain any concrete information about the nature of those structures at that time. The developments in the synthesis of P-peptide oligomers of predefined length and advances in methods (i.e., NMR spectroscopy and X-ray crystallography) for the 3D characterization of such compounds has led to the discovery of new helical structures found to be adopted by a variety of P-peptides. I1,3-7 ... 

Microfluidics and miniaturization hold great promise in terms of sample throughput advantages [100]. Miniaturization of analytical processes into microchip platforms designed for micro total analytical systems (/i-TASs) is a new and rapidly developing field. For SPE, Yu et al. [123] developed a microfabricated analytical microchip device that uses a porous monolith sorbent with two different surface chemistries. The monolithic porous polymer was prepared by in situ photoinitiated polymerization within the channels of the microfluidic device and used for on-chip SPE. The sorbent was prepared to have both hydrophobic and ionizable surface chemistries. Use of the device for sorption and desorption of various analytes was demonstrated [123]. 

As discussed already in the introduction, there is a huge and diverse literature on thin films of polymer blends and block copolymers. The field is rapidly developing, and many phenomena are as yet not fully understood. In this section, we hence cannot attempt to give a fair evaluation of this rich literature, but focus... 

Hoogenboom, R. and Schubert, U.S. 2007. Microwave-assisted polymer synthesis Recent developments in a rapidly expanding field of research. Macrontolecular Rapid Communications, 28 368-86. 

Since the first theoretical works of the sixties (1 ) on LCAO techniques in polymer quantum chemistry, the field has known a rapid development and standard SCF calculations on regular polymers are now routinely performed. In those methods, the translational symmetry is fully exploited (and consequently assumed) in order to reduce to manageable dimensions the formidable task of computing electronic states of an extended system. 

This paper has presented an overview of some of the emerging trends in polymer semiconductors and devices. It is an extremely rapidly developing field of activity in which many industrial and academic groups are active. Commercial manufacture of LEDs for displays now looks feasible and products are widely anticipated in the next year or so. Other devices are rapidly progressing to a similar level of development. There is, however, still a... 

In both real space and reciprocal space there have been tremendous instrumental advances in the last decade, whose benefits are still being appreciated in the polymer field. A wealth of new microscopies have been developed, which seem particularly suited to this area of biological polymeric systems. With the exception of the scanning probe microscopies, which do seem fairly widespread, many of these are almost certainly not yet playing as important a role that they have the potential to do. Thus the general field of new microscopies seems likely to be one of rapid expansion in its application to the sort of systems of interest here, and some specific (rather than exhaustive) examples will be mentioned. 

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