Properties of Designed Copolymers

Apart from the introductory section, the article is subdivided into two major sections Synthesis and Properties of designed copolymers. 

It is commonplace to say that the properties of a copolymer depend not only on its chemical sequence but also on the chemical structure of its monomeric units. Therefore, the second important route in molecular design can be connected with designing monomeric units of the copolymer having a given sequence distribution. One of the promising ways in this direction is to adjust the amphiphilic properties of the copolymer chain. 

The focus here will be on the consideration of designed copolymers exhibiting selective interactions with the surfaces and interfaces. In particular, we will consider some properties of adsorption-tuned copolymers and partly cross-Unked polymer envelopes that function as a molecular dispenser. 

A graft copolymer is synthesized from branches to main-chain by the copolymerization of a polymerizable polymer(macromonomer) with a comonomer. The range of the molecular weight of a macromonomer is normally 500-20,000. Functionality or property of graft copolymers can be designed by controlling the property of macromonomer and the copolymerization reaction. 

In particular, when a block copolymer matrix is used, an adequate surfactant can be used to selectively disperse nanofillers in one of the blocks of the block copolymer matrix. This selectivity is important in designing the properties of block copolymer-based composites. 

Over the past few decades, we have witnessed increasing interest in developing new types of synthetic copolymers via design of their comonomer sequences. Most of the physical and mechanical properties of copolymers, which comprise two or more covalendy bonded sequences of chemically distina monomer species, depend not only on the chemical composition but also on the arrangement of the comonomers in the polymer chain. There may be significant differences, for example, between two polymer systems with the same chemical composition, but different comonomer distributions (i.e., one of wbich has the comonomers distributed randomly in the chain, while the other has long blocks of each monomer type). In many cases, just the copolymer sequence dictates the structure and properties of the copolymer. To illustrate this, we will mention only two familiar examples. 

The present study is designed to correlate the rheological properties of the copolymers formed in the presence of different reactive diluents and codiluents with the glass transition temperatures of these films, calculated on the basics of Fox equation. 

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