Uniqueness, intermolecular interactions

Although these structures involve unique intermolecular interactions in the crystal lattice, they indicate a potential for flexibility in some repeats. 

The development of chemistry in the last 20 years has revealed a significant shift of interest on the part of theoreticians and experimentalists [1,2]. Earlier, chemists attention was concentrated on atoms and atom-atom bonds. This strategy has been very successful in the creation of new molecules with unusual structures and with new chemical and physical properties. However, two decades ago, the primary objects of chemical studies become intermolecular interactions leading to complex molecular assemblies that exhibit unusual and often unique macro properties. This situation has dominated in all areas of modem chemical science from physical, organic, inorganic, and organometallic chemistry to material science and biochemistry, and has resulted in the formulation of new chemical disciplines supramolecular chemistry and crystal engineering. 

In addition to the above effects, the intermolecular interaction may affect polymer dynamics through the thermodynamic force. This force makes chains align parallel with each other, and retards the chain rotational diffusion. This slowing down in the isotropic solution is referred to as the pretransition effect. The thermodynamic force also governs the unique rheological behavior of liquid-crystalline solutions as will be explained in Sect. 9. For rodlike polymer solutions, Doi [100] treated the thermodynamic force effects by adding a self-consistent mean field or a molecular field Vscf (a) to the external field potential h in Eq. (40b). Using the second virial approximation (cf. Sect. 2), he formulated Vscf(a), as follows [4] ... 

Since the electronic absorption spectra of polvsilanes and polygermanes also depend strongly on conformation (3), these materials provide a unique opportunity to study the effect of backbone conformation on the NLO properties, particularly since varying alkyl substituents can dramatically influence the backbone structure through intermolecular interactions (e.g., side chain crystallization) while causing... 

General overview of several studies of transport and intermolecular interactions in compressed supercritical fluids is presented. The unique aspects of the instrumentation used in these studies are emphasized. First, the results of NMR studies of self-diffusion in supercritical ethylene and toluene are discussed. These experiments used the fixed field gradient NMR spin-echo technique. Second, the novel NMR technique for the determination of solubility of solids in supercritical fluids is described. 

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