Supramolecular polymers

What started as a scientific challenge roughly 10 years ago has become a technological reality today, as materials from supramolecular polymers and their many applications as smart materials have emerged. Synthetic polymeric materials are among the most important classes of new materials introduced in the 20th century. They are primarily used for construction, but electronic and biomedical applications are also at the forefront of science and technology. Only after the pioneering work of Hermann Staudinger did it become evident that polymeric properties in both solution and solid state are the result of the macromolecular nature of the molecules. A large number of repeating units are covalently linked into a long chain, and the entanglements of the macromolecular chains are responsible for many of the typical polymer properties