PREPARATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF PROTON CONDUCTING PVA POLYMER COMP - Alakanandana Amuru - Bog

Molecules of compounds are made of more than one type of atom. A simple example of a small molecule is water which contains two hydrogen atoms and one of oxygen. Polymers are very large molecules with many more atoms ranging from 10,000 to 100,000 atoms per molecule. The word polymer is derived from the Greek root poly-, meaning is many and mer- meaning is part or segment. Many of the same units (or mers) are connected together to form a long chain called polymer. Polymers can be extremely large, often made up of hundreds of thousands of atoms. So, they are also referred to as macromolecules. Partly because of their size, polymers have interesting behavior and special properties. Small molecules of water do not tend to get tangled with each other and each one of them is separate and distinct from the others. Whereas, the large molecules of polymers become enmeshed with each other, much like a single strand of cooked spaghetti (noodles) gets tangled up with other strands. The long polymer chains (molecules) intermingle with one another and become entangled. It is very difficult to separate one chain from the remaining chains.