2023
Overview
Synthetic polymers are large molecules built from many repeating chemical units (monomers) joined through human-directed polymerization, in contrast to polymers that occur naturally. Produced chiefly from petrochemical and natural-gas feedstocks, and increasingly from renewable sources, they include familiar materials such as polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, nylon, polyesters, and synthetic rubbers, as well as adhesives, coatings, resins, fibers, and membranes. Their properties, such as strength, flexibility, thermal stability, and degradability, can be tuned by choice of monomer, chain length, branching, and processing, which makes them central to industry, packaging, construction, electronics, medicine, and everyday products. Methods such as graft copolymerization allow chemists to combine different polymer segments to engineer specific behaviors, including improved biodegradability. Research within Polymer Science Research engages with polymer synthesis and modification, including the production of a polymer via graft copolymerization of gum Arabic and polyethylene glycol, illustrating how synthetic and natural components are combined to control material properties. This page gathers peer-reviewed, open-access research relevant to synthetic polymers, their chemistry, synthesis, and the engineering of their structure and performance.
Research published in this journal
1 peer-reviewed article, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.