CH 864 (Old Title): Biopolymers has been renamed as CH 850 (Revised Title): Synthetic and Biopolymers 

CH 850

Synthetic and Biopolymers
Syllabus: 

Introduction to polymers: Classification, structure, conformation, PDI, molecular weight distribution. Synthesis: Cationic, anionic, radical, metal-catalyzed polymerization. Physical properties: Viscosity and intrinsic viscosity, Osmosis, Light scattering for Rg and Rh.  Ideal and real chain models, simple scaling ideas, end-to-end distances and Rg of ideal chains, excluded volume interactions, dilute, semi-dilute, concentrated regimes. polyelectrolytes, Manning condensation.

Proteins, DNA, RNA, Polysaccharides and other biopolymers, properties and differences from other polymers.

Recent trends: self-healing polymers, vitrimers, supramolecular polymers, block copolymers.

Inorganic polymers such as polyphosphazenes, polysiloxanes, and Polysilanes.

Text References: 

1. M. Rubinstein and R. Colby, Polymer Physics, Oxford University Press, 2004.

2. J. R. C. van der Maarel, Introduction to Biopolymer Physics,  World Scientific, 2007.

3. I. Teraoka, Polymer Solutions: an Introduction to Physical Properties, Wiley, 2002.

4. Odian, Principles of Polymerization, 4th Edition, Wiley-Interscience, 2004.

5. J. E. Mark, H. R. Allcock and R. West, Inorganic Polymers, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ 1992.

6. V. Chandrasekhar, Inorganic and Organometallic Polymers, Springer, Berlin, 2005.