The term
polymer /ˈpä-lə-mər/ encompasses a very large, broad classes of
compounds, both natural and synthetic, with a wide variety of properties. Because of the extraordinary range of properties of polymeric materials, they play an essential and ubiquitous roles in everyday life, from those of familiar synthetic
plastics and other materials of day-to-day work and home life, to the natural
biopolymers that are fundamental to biological structure and function.
A polymer is a chemical
compound or mixture of compounds consisting of repeating structural units created through a process of
polymerization. The term derives from the ancient Greek word πολύς (polus, meaning "many, much") and μέρος (meros, meaning "parts"), and refers to a
molecule whose structure is composed of multiple repeating units, from which originates a characteristic of high
relative molecular mass and attendant properties. The units composing polymers derive, actually or conceptually, from molecules of low relative molecular mass. The term was coined in 1833 by
Jöns Jacob Berzelius, though with a definition distinct from the modern
IUPAC definition. Polymers are studied in the fields of
biophysics and
macromolecular science, and
polymer science (which includes
polymer chemistry and
polymer physics).
Historically, products arising from the linkage of repeating units by
covalent chemical bonds have been the primary focus of polymer science; emerging important areas of the science now focus on non-covalent links. Because of the stipulation as to repeating substructures, polymers are formally a subclass of the category of
macromolecules; the
polyisoprene of
latex rubber and the
polystyrene of
styrofoam are examples of polymeric natural/biological and synthetic polymers, respectively. In biological contexts, essentially all biological macromolecules—i.e.,
proteins (polyamides),
nucleic acids (polynucleotides), and polysaccharides—are purely polymeric, or are composed in large part of polymeric components—e.g., isoprenylated/lipid-modified glycoproteins, where small lipidic molecule and oligosaccharide modifications occur on the polyamide backbone of the protein.