The Size of Polymer Molecules — Mean Values and Distributions of the Molecular Weight

Abstract

The size of a macromolecule can be described by the molecular weight (MW) M as well as by the degree of polymerization (DP) P. Both quantities are related according to $$ M = {M_{0}} \cdot P $$ (10.1) where M 0 represents the MW of the repeat unit. Mostly, one applies MW to characterize the size of macromolecules but sometimes use of DP is advantageous, e.g., in the comparison of molecular size before and after a polymer-analogous reaction.