Polymeric Systems

It is difficult to imagine how our highly evolved technological society would function, or how life would even exist on our planet, if polymers did not exist. The intensive study of polymeric systems, which has been under way for several decades, has recently yielded new insights into the properties of assemblies of these complex molecules and the physical principles that govern their behavior. These developments have included new concepts to describe aspects of the many body behavior in these systems, microscopic analyses that bring our understanding of these systems much closer to our understanding of simple liquids and solids, and the discovery of novel chemistry that …