Yoshikazu Tanabe – författare

This book gives an overview of recent advances in the science and technology of polymeric and organic materials. Speciality polymers and novel polymeric catalysts have been objects of intense research during the last decade; they have had great influence in the chemical industry and have spawned a variety of new application areas. At the same time, novel investigative methods such as atomic force microscopy and computer simulation have provided new insight into some of the fundamental principles of polymer science. In a systematic and comprehensive manner, each chapter of this book gives a self-contained review of a particular aspect of recent progress. This book is the first attempt to provide a background perspective to the research field of polymeric and organic materials and it will be of great value to both professional researchers and postgraduate students.

The explosion in the scale of production of polymers has made our daily life more convenient during the past several decades, and caused serious discus­ sion on recycling and safety. During this time, many polymer researchers who have constructed new industries and new fields of science changed their interests to specialty polymers and some have moved to bioscience. On the other hand, the expected limitations of silicon devices, which are fundamen­ tal in the present semiconductor and personal computer world, have initiated much interest in the idea of molecular electronic devices. Based on this idea, ultrathin films with many functions were studied, but it is still difficult to use them in real information systems. In these studies, polymer scientists and solid state physicists collaborated with each other and the new field of conju­ gated materials, including charge-transfer-complexes, conjugated conductive materials and fullerenes, has grown. Here, optical properties are the main interest because new materials are necessary in the advanced information so­ ciety of the twenty first century. During the course of this development, the boundary between polymers and small organic molecules has become blurred, except for the synthetic chemists. This new field of science and engineering is growing and will propose new materials and new devices. The present book aims at a compact presentation of the principal con­ cepts in current polymeric and organic materials science and engineering.