Uses and applications of polymers

The macromolecules which occur in nature have evolved over millions of years and their molecular structure is often very complex and precisely tailored for the particular role they play in our existence, e.g. the sequencing of structural units in DNA in relation to heredity. In this brief overview, attention is limited to macromolecules which can be synthesized in the laboratory and ultimately in a production scale chemical plant, i.e. those macromolecules or polymers which Homo sapiens has endeavoured to construct for his own purposes. These molecules usually have a much simpler molecular structure than naturally occurring macromolecules and are often called polymers (from the Greek for many (poly) and part (mer)), although they too fall into the overall classification of macromolecules. 

The first synthetic polymers were obtained by chemical modification 

In the 1920s, Staudinger [2] first suggested that macromolecules were not simple aggregates but could exist in their own right. They could not be reduced to the smaller molecules from which they were derived without the destruction of their unique macromolecular chemical identity. It is now well established that macromolecules, and polymers in general, derive their properties from the 

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