About Polymers

For a material to be classified as a polymer, it must consist of bound repeating units of a monomer, which is a molecule that has the ability to react with other molecules. It is often thought that these materials can only be synthetic, but polymers also occur in nature. Cellulose, a critical component of plants, is classified as a polymer as it is made up of repeat units of sugar molecules. Human-made polymers include concrete, plastic, and glass. These synthetic polymers are often the product of a polymerization reaction which adds monomers onto the growing polymer chain, including addition or condensation reactions.

Polymers are fundamental aspects of daily lives and continuous innovation in the field is a necessity. This collection is dedicated to novel research in the field, on both a theoretical and experimental basis. Submissions to this collection can be focused on but not limited to the following areas:

• Polymerization reactions
• Applications/uses of polymers
• Bio-inspired polymers/biopolymers
• Polymer theory
• Characterization techniques

Only research funded by Horizon 2020 and/or Horizon Europe is eligible for publication on Open Research Europe. All article processing charges will be covered centrally by the European Commission. Open Research Europe requires open access to research data supporting articles under the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’. All articles should include citations to repositories that host the data underlying the results, together with any information needed to replicate, validate, and/or reuse the results/your study and analysis of the data. We recognise there may be exceptions due to ethical, data protection, or confidentiality considerations, or because the data have been obtained from a third party and access restrictions apply.