FRACTALS AND RELATED HIERARCHICAL-MODELS IN POLYMER SCIENCE

Polymer science, an interdisciplinary science well‐rooted in organic chemistry and in materials science, encompasses an inordinate number and diversity of substance classes and thus has far‐reaching applications. Interestingly, polymers also represent a great challenge to the theoreticians, since their theoretical treatment often necessitates appropriate extensions of the classical methods from solid state physics and from statistical physics. Thus, new concepts often have to be invoked when considering the special properties of polymers. In this review we concentrate on one of the modern concepts in the theory of polymers, namely on scaling. Scaling is closely associated with new developments in the field of fractals and of hierarchical structures. Such concepts are invaluable for the modeling of complex geometries and for describing dynamical processes in polymeric materials. Here, we focus on a presentation of these ideas and we outline examples of recent research in which these concepts have been successfully applied. Copyright © 1990 by VCH Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Germany