Repeating units

In polymer solutions and blends, it becomes of interest to understand how the surface tension depends on the molecular weight (or number of repeat units, IV) of the macromolecule and on the polymer-solvent interactions through the interaction parameter, x- In terms of a Hory lattice model, x is given by the polymer and solvent interactions through... 

Coarse-grained models have a longstanding history in polymer science. Long-chain molecules share many common mesoscopic characteristics which are independent of the atomistic stmcture of the chemical repeat units [4, 5 and 6]. The self-similar stmcture [7, 8, 9 and 10] on large length scales is only characterized by a single length scale, the chain extension R. 

Off-lattice models enjoy a growing popularity. Again, a particle corresponds to a small number of atomistic repeat units... 

CHEOPS (we tested Version 3.0.1) is a program for predicting polymer properties. It consists of two programs The analysis program allows the user to draw the repeat unit structure and will then compute a whole list of properties the synthesis program allows the user to specify a class of polymers and desired properties and will then try the various permutations of the functional groups to find ones that fit the requirements. On a Pentium Pro 200 system, the analysis computations were essentially instantaneous and the synthesis computations could take up to a few minutes. There was no automated way to transfer information between the two programs. 

Poly(tetmfluoroethylene). Poly(tetrafluoroethylene) is prepared from tetrafluoroethy-lene and consists of repeating units in a predominantly linear chain ... 

Poly(vinylidene Fluoride). Poly(vinylidene fluoride) consists of linear chains in which the predominant repeating unit is... 

Poly(butylene Terephthalate). Poly(butylene terephthalate) is prepared in a condensation reaction between dimethyl terephthalate and 1,4-butanediol and its repeating unit has the general structure... 

Chromosomes are extremely complex chemicals that are assembled from simple repeating units and contain all the chemical information needed to reproduce animate species. Each living organism has its own complete set of chromosomes, called the genome. 

The degree of polymerization of a polymer is simply the number of repeat units in a molecule. The degree of polymerization n is given by the ratio of the molecular weight of the polymer to the molecular weight of the repeat unit ... 

One type of polymerization reaction is the addition reaction in which successive repeat units add on to the chain. No other product molecules are formed, so the weight of the monomer and that of the repeat unit are identical in this case. A second category of polymerization reaction is the condensation reaction, in which one or two small molecules like water or HCl are eliminated for each chain linkage formed. In this case the molecular weight of the monomer and the... 

Although the difference is almost 5% for propane, it is closer to 0.1% for the case of n = 100, which is about the threshold for polymers. The precise values of these numbers will be different, depending on the specific repeat units and end groups present. For example, if Mq = 100 and = 80, the difference is... 

Just as it is not necessary for polymer chains to be linear, it is also not necessary for all repeat units to be the same. We have already mentioned molecules like proteins where a wide variety of different repeat units are present. Among synthetic polymers, those in which a single kind of repeat unit are involved are called homopolymers, and those containing more than one kind of repeat unit are copolymers. Note that these definitions are based on the repeat unit, not the monomer. An ordinary polyester is not a copolymer, even though two different monomers, acids and alcohols, are its monomers. By contrast, copolymers result when different monomers bond together in the same way to produce a chain in which each kind of monomer retains its respective substituents in the polymer molecule. The unmodified term copolymer is generally used to designate the case where two different repeat units are involved. Where three kinds of repeat units are present, the system is called a terpolymer where there are more than three, the system is called a multicomponent copolymer. The copolymers we discuss in this book will be primarily two-component molecules. We shall discuss copolymers in Chap. 7, so the present remarks are simply for purposes of orientation. 

Since the monomers are specified to be vinyl monomers, each contributes two carbon atoms to the polymer backbone, with the associated extended length of 0.252 nm per repeat unit. Therefore the total extended length of the empirical formula unit is... 

Note that the average weight per repeat unit could be used to evaluate the overall degree of polymerization of this terpolymer. For example, if the molecular weight were 43,000, the corresponding degree of polymerization would be... 

With copolymers, it is not sufficient merely to describe the empirical formula to characterize the molecule. Another question that can be asked concerns the distribution of the different kinds of repeat units in the molecule. Starting from monomers A and B, the following distribution patterns are obtained in linear polymers ... 

Random. The A-B sequence is governed strictly by chance, subject only to the relative abundances of repeat units. For equal proportions of A and B we have ... 

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