Living Polymers: Dead Interesting to Chemists

摘要

The polymers we encounter in our everyday life, such as plastic bags, polystyrene insulation, and PVC tubing, are easily made, but the long-chain molecules of which they consist are a chaotic mess of tangled threads of many lengths. Some are short, only a few hundred units long, while others are made up of chains consisting of thousands, sometimes millions, of units. From this confusion many wonderful properties arise, and there are polymers that surpass anything that occurs naturally in terms of strength, durability, clarity, and versatility.