Hydrogen Bonded Polymers

Book excerpt: Control of polymeric structure is among the most important endeavours of modern macromolecular science. In particular, tailoring the positioning and strength of intermolecular forces within macromolecules by synthetic methods and thus gaining structural control over the final polymeric materials has become feasible, resulting in the field of supramolecular polymer science. Besides other intermolecular forces, hydrogen bonds are unique intermolecular forces enabling the tuning of material properties via self-assembly processes over a wide range of interactions strength ranging from several kJmol to several tens of kJmol . Central for the formation of these structures are precursor molecules of small molecular weight (usually lower than 10 000), which can assemble in solid or solution to aggregates of defined geometry.