Oligomer vs. Polymer

Oligomernoun

(chemistry) A compound intermediate between a monomer and a polymer, normally having a specified number of units between about five and a hundred.

Oligomernoun

A molecule composed of a small number of linked monomer units; a short polymer; - compounds called oligomers have less than one hundred monomer units and usually less than thirty. Oligomers of increasing length are called dimer, trimer, tetramer, pentamer, hexamer, heptamer, octamer, nonamer, decamer, etc. In colloquial laboratory jargon, they may also be referred to as nine-mer, ten-mer, eleven-mer, twelve-mer, etc., especially for oligomers of greater than eight units.

Oligomernoun

a polymer whose molecules consist of relatively few repeating units.

Oligomer

In chemistry and biochemistry, an oligomer ( (listen)) is a molecule that consists of a few similar or identical repeating units which could be derived, actually or conceptually, from copies of a smaller molecule, its monomer. The name is composed from Greek elements oligo-, and -mer, .

Polymernoun

(organic chemistry) A long or larger molecule consisting of a chain or network of many repeating units, formed by chemically bonding together many identical or similar small molecules called monomers. A polymer is formed by polymerization, the joining of many monomer molecules.

Polymernoun

A material consisting of such polymer molecules.

Polymernoun

Any one of two or more substances related to each other by polymerism; specifically, a substance produced from another substance by chemical polymerization.

Polymernoun

a naturally occurring or synthetic compound consisting of large molecules made up of a linked series of repeated simple monomers

Polymer

A polymer (; Greek poly-, + -mer, ) is a substance or material consisting of very large molecules, or macromolecules, composed of many repeating subunits. Due to their broad spectrum of properties, both synthetic and natural polymers play essential and ubiquitous roles in everyday life.