polymers

[efcdrake]

does anyone know what the importance of carbon is in the production of polymeric materails? really stuck! would be great if you could help!

[jake-the-peg]

Carbon has the unique ability to form almost incredibly long chains by bonding with other carbon atoms.

This is the basis of polymers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymer

[brachiopod]

Not unique, there are a few others, for example, silicon, another Group IV element, also has the ability to form long chains, rings etc by bonding with itself. The term for this process is catenation.

[jake-the-peg]

I knew somebody was going to say this!

It's unique because of the length of what is possible not because of the ability to self bond.

Silanes are the silicon equivilent but they cannot create chains anything like as long as carbon and are unstable in oxygen.

Silicones have a repeating -Si-O-Si-O- backbone and are much more stable.

So there are other options but Carbon's your main man

[Peter Pedant]

the other thing they taught us in er 1970

was that C-C, C-H and C-O bond energies are similar which favours concatenation (my new word!), otherwise there is a tendency to form shorter mols with stronger bonds.

I cant remember what the Si-Si and Si - O energies are.