How long can a super-long molecule be? I know DNAs and proteins are pretty long molecules. From my knowledge, A stretched DNA can go as long as few meters? Monofilament silk and polymers can go few kilometers long, but I assume that they are polymer bundles instead o single polymer strands?
So can we make super-long polymer chains? What's the use of those? What decide the limit of elongation in polymerization?
Theoretically, as long you are able to suppress termination and inter-chain reaction the limit for chain growth is infinity. Statistical, more one single chain grows lower is probability of the chain reactive head to "hit" a monomer. For real systems the chain growth impose additional challenges such viscosity increase with impacts in the monomer diffusion, increase of density of radical species (Norrish trommsdorff effect). So in practical therms (synthetically) high molar mass polymers are obtained by controlled polymerization, high monomer equivalent molar proportion, long polymerization time and diluted media or as you stated by catalytic or enzymatic (bio engineered) polymerization which produces low molar dispersity polymer and long chains.
Dear all, the MW may be extremely high to the point no melting or solubilization would be possible, due to the high cohesion and entanglements. According to my past exprience, polyacrylamide is the synthetic polymer with the highest possible MW, that may be reach under simple and conventional procedures. My Regards
It is unlimited. For example, piece of diamond or resit resin - are one molecule.
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