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Vol.
27 No. 3
May-June 2005
Spectroscopy of Partially Ordered Macromolecular Systems
J. Kahovec (editor)
Macromolecular Symposia, Vol. 220
Wiley-VCH, 2005, pp. 1-175
ISBN 3-527-31323-0
Partial order has become one of the most important themes of scientific research in the field of both natural and synthetic macromolecular systems.
Indeed, some kind of dynamic order is the prerequisite of any function of a molecular system, be it catalytic function of, for example, some complex of enzymes or some targeted mechanical, electrical, or optical function of a nanoscale molecular device. The classical tools for examining order, such as diffraction, scattering, or microscopy, often fail to reflect partial order in a satisfactory way. At the same time, molecular spectroscopy, mostly represented by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and vibrational (infrared and Raman) spectroscopy, has shown the ability to examine order in such systems on a semi-local or even larger scale, although its primary objective is the local aspect of molecular structure.
Partial order can sometimes offer a challenge to spectroscopic methods. For instance, lowered local mobility due to molecular ordering can broaden signals in high-resolution NMR and lead to their complete loss in extreme cases. In a complementary way, highly mobile disordered molecules could resist detection by cross-polarization in solid-state NMR. However primarily unpleasant, these phenomena were turned into an advantage and ingeniously utilized in the characterization of structure.
The two main branches of spectroscopic observation of molecules, vibrational and NMR spectroscopy, have been known to reveal somewhat complementary aspects of structure from the points of view of their time-window (molecular dynamics) and locality of reflected structural motifs. With the development of new theoretical and experimental approaches, both methods gradually overcame their respective limitations in the recent decade. Nonetheless, their remaining differences are an additional source of valuable information for the examination of partial order in macromolecular systems.
All these and other aspects were addressed by an international conference on the Spectroscopy of Partially Ordered Macromolecular Systems, which was held 21-24 July 2003 in Prague, Czech Republic. It was organized under the auspices of IUPAC by the Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic as the 22nd of its annual discussion conferences on macromolecules. In this volume, some of the most important contributions are reproduced.
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