Everything about Monomers totally explained
A
monomer (from
Greek mono "one" and
meros "part") is a small
molecule that may become
chemically bonded to other monomers to form a
polymer .
Synthetic monomers
Examples of monomers are
hydrocarbons such as the
alkene and
arene homologous series.
Here hydrocarbon monomers such as
phenylethene and
ethene form polymers used as
plastics like polyphenylethene (commonly known as
polystyrene) and
polyethene (commonly known as
polyethylene or
polythene). Other commercially important monomers include acrylic monomers such as
acrylic acid,
methyl methacrylate, and
acrylamide.
Natural monomers
Amino acids are natural monomers, and
polymerize to form
proteins.
Glucose monomers can also polymerize to form
starches,
amylopectins and
glycogen polymers. In this case the
polymerization reaction is known as a dehydration or
condensation reaction (due to the formation of
water (H
2O) as one of the products) where a
hydrogen atom and a
hydroxyl (-OH) group are lost to form H
2O and an
oxygen molecule bonds between each monomer unit.
Molecular weight
The lower molecular weight compounds built from monomers are also referred to as
dimers,
trimers, tetramers, quadramers, pentamers, octamers, 20-mers, etc. if they've 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, or 20 monomer units, respectively. Any number of these monomer units may be indicated by the appropriate prefix, eg,
decamer, being a 10-unit monomer chain or polymer. Larger numbers are often stated in English in lieu of Greek. Polymers with relatively low number of units are called
oligomers.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Monomers'.
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