|
What Are Polymers? What are polymers and how do we use them to help your business?
The ability to "build" a compound with designer characteristic, accounts for the diverse application, use and utility of polymers. By changing the structure of polymers it is possible to design polymers to address a myriad of engineering issues ad challenges. For instance the "chain like" structure of polymers permits the design of compounds of varying length. Relatively short polymers produce physically thick viscous materials and/or gummy substances. When the chains are relatively long they produce hard structural compounds. When the chains are separate (non-linked), the material is usually a deformable "plastic". When the chains link up to each other and form a three-dimensional mesh, the material becomes rigid and inflexible.
Like all organic molecules, monomers exhibit a dazzling array of physical and chemical properties, which they then pass on to the polymer. These properties are carried to the resulting polymer by the functional group. A typical monomer looks like this: CH=CH-R R = F (fluorine atom), you get "Teflon', a low surface energy, high chemical resistant compound. R = ONO2 (nitrate group), you get chemical instability, a key component in explosives like gun-cotton R = SH (thiol group), you get thiol associated properties such as the ability to cross-link and bind metal ions R = C6 H6 (phenyl group), you get UV absorption and other phenyl-like properties R = Cl (chlorine atom), you get PVC, a common plastic resin with good chemical stability. R = OPO3 (phosphate group), you get an oxygen rich polymer, which is inherently flame retardant. |
One
of the most exciting and important advances in the field of chemistry
has been the manufacture and use of Polymers. Polymers are a class
of chemicals, which are chain-like substances. Polymers can be viewed
as "natures erector set" allowing for the development specialized
chemicals within classes of chemical compounds having specific properties.
Polymers
are made up of small chain-links called monomers. Monomers can be
gases or liquids. When monomers link up to each other through covalent
bonding (the strongest chemical bond in nature) they form polymers.
We call this reaction polymerization.