Polymer science beginnings

So when did polymer science begin The answer is not easy to determine, so it will help to attempt to understand why. Let s try to imagine our world without synthetic polymers. Our clothing would consist entirely of cotton, wool, linen, and, if we could afford it, silk. Our shoes would be made of leather. Raincoats would consist of cotton coated with natural rubber. Automobiles would be considerably heavier because they would be made mostly of steel, glass, and natural rubber. Their interiors would be covered in leather. 

The polymer-solvent interaction parameter, which is a key constant defining the physical chemistry of every polymer in a solvent, can be obtained from electrochemical experiments. Definition and inclusion of this interaction was a milestone in the development of polymer science at the beginning of the 1950s. We hope that Eq. 47 will have similar influence in the development of all the cross-interactions of electrochemistry and polymer science by the use of the ESCR model. A second point is that Eq. 47 provides us with an efficient tool to obtain this constant in electroactive... 

The architecture of macromolecules is another important synthetic variable. New materials with controlled branching sequences or stereoregularity provide tremendous opportunity for development. New polymerization catalysts and initiators for controlled free-radical polymerization are driving many new materials design, synthesis, and production capabilities. Combined with state-of-the-art characterization by probe microscopy, radiation scattering, and spectroscopy, the field of polymer science is poised for explosive development of novel and important materials. New classes of nonlinear structured polymeric materials have been invented, such as dendrimers. These structures have regularly spaced branch points beginning from a central point—like branches from a tree trunk. New struc-... 

Along with the need to "spread the news" of polymer science was the increasing need to develop an adequate vehicle which would focus on the dissemination of generated experimental results in polymer chemistry. In 1940 Drs. Maurits Dekker and E.S. Proskauer of Interscience Publishers consented to begin the publication of a series of Monographs on polymer chemistry, "High Polymers", with H. Mark and G.S. Whitby as editors. The response was so positive... 

NSF funded polymer science modular experiments are now available from Eli Pearce. There are 15 of these modules for use with an introductory polymer science course or for use with a separate beginning polymer laboratory course. 

In view of the wide range of this area, it was impossible to publish all contributions in successive volumes of ADVANCES IN POLYMER SCIENCE. Part I was published in Vol. 72 Part II in this Vol. 75. Part III and Part IV will follow in the beginning of 1986. 

Almost all the chemical and physical studies have been concerned with homopolymers, in which all monomers (repeat units) are identical. In polymer science in general, the synthesis and study of copolymers, where there are two or more different types of repeat units arranged in various types of order, have been developed enormously. Copolymers may, for instance, be a way of giving to a material simultaneously two properties that would be incompatible, or would not even exist, in a homopolymer, and they also exhibit a rich variety of structures and morphologies at the scale of 100 A or more. The synthesis and study of copolymers involving CPs are only beginning and will be mentioned briefly (see Section II.E). 

Up to now the number of materials which have been subjected to solid-state extrusion is very small. The deformation mechanisms and the correlation of the deformation Conditions with the extrudate properties are far from being understood. This holds especially for multiphase polymers. We have reported a field of polymer science which seems to be still in its beginning. 

Moore s law, computational power has increased by a factor of 1000 since then. In addition, with the development of many computer codes that employ the Car-ParrineUo method, combined with the enhanced accuracy of density functionals that have been devised since 1985, there has been widespread use of the Car-Parrinello method. Between 1997 and the beginning of 2000, over 500 papers that incorporate results found using Car-Parrinello simulations have been published in major journals. Most of these papers have been published by groups considered primarily to be in the field of physics. On the other hand, the topics of these papers span the spectrum of disciplines as traditionally classified physics, industrial chemistry, catalysis, materials engineering, microelectronic materials, polymer science, biology, and geology. 

Mossbauer spectroscopy is now a well-established if somewhat specialized spectroscopic method, explained in numerous text books (9). However, it may be unfamiliar to many workers in the field of polymer science, so we will begin by briefly summarizing the essential features of the method, and some aspects of the interpretation of the spectra. More details are given in a recent paper (5). 

Although stainless steels were discovered at the turn of the century and copper silicon alloys started to emerge at about the same time, the real explosion of materials research and development began at around the beginning of World War II. Polymer science and technology were no exception. Nylon was already developed at the DuPont Company. Alloy 20 was developed by DuPont in the late thirties. At about the same time, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) (Teflon ) was discovered which led to further development of fluoropol5miers and ushered in an era of high-performance polymer materials for corrosion control. 

Many of the terms, definitions, and concepts used in polymer science are not encountered in other branches of science and must be understood in order to fully discuss the synthesis, characterization, structure, and properties of polymers. While most of these will be discussed in detail in subsequent chapters, some are of such fundamental importance that they must be introduced at the beginning. 

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