Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
Polymers such as polyamides (1-13), polyesters (1-5), and so on are not named
as copolymers since the chemical structure of the joining linkage in each case
shows that the parent monomers must alternate and copolymer nomenclature
would therefore be redundant.
There are a few common polymers also in which the accepted name conveys
relatively little information about the repeating unit structure. This list includes
polycarbonate (1-52)
CH
3
C
O
C
O
O
x
CH
3
1-52
and poly(phenylene oxide) (1-14). ABS polymers (
Section 1.5.3
) are an important
class of thermoplastics which consists of blends and/or graft copolymers. A sim-
ple repeating unit and name cannot usually be written for such species.
Graft copolymers like 1-27 are named as poly(A-g-B) with the backbone poly-
mer mentioned before the branch polymer. Examples are poly(ethylene-g-styrene)
or starch-g-polystyrene. In block copolymer nomenclature b is used in place of g
and the polymers are named from an end of the species. Thus, the triblock macro-
molecule 1-53
H
H
H
H
H
CH
2
C
C
C
C
C
CH
2
C
x
y
z
H
CH
3
H
1-53
is called poly(styrene-b-isoprene-b-styrene). When such materials are articles of com-
merce they are usually designated by the monomer initials, and this structure would
be named SIS block copolymer. Reference
[5]
may be consulted for further details of
copolymer nomenclature. Reference
[6]
lists locations of International Union of Pure
and Applied Chemistry recommendations on macromolecular nomenclature.
Note that the common nomenclature generally uses trivial names for mono-
mers as well as the corresponding polymer (1-1 and 1-2 are examples).
This brief review has emphasized the exceptions more than the regularities of
the conventional polymer nomenclature. The reader will find that this jargon is
not as formidable as it may appear to be on first encounter. A very little practice
is all that is usually needed to recognize repeating units, parent monomer struc-
tures, and the common names.
