A Structural Characteristic of Hyperbranched Polymers

The structural characterization of hyperbranched polymers is discussed. Current approaches describing the structure of these polymers in terms of such parameters as the degree of branching and the average number of branches are shown to be inadequate. We propose characterizing the structure of polymers using the distribution over the degree of branching and the (D-W) over bar/(D-n) over bar ratio as the quantitative measure of distribution width. Using the example of AB(2) type monomer polycondensation, it is shown how this value varies in the course of the process along with other structural parameters.