More than ten years have passed now since the first printing of this book, and
I am happy to say that it is a success. Many thousands of volumes can today
be found worldwide in libraries, laboratories of polymer science and private
hands, with a special edition for China and an edition in Japanese. The book
obviously filled a gap. After such a period the time had come for a revision
and moderate expansion of the book’s contents and I continuously worked on
it during the last years. The basis of the new sections and chapters were again
lectures given to students of physics and chemistry in Freiburg. Proceeding in
this manner, the original ‘pedagogical style’ of the writing was continued. The
results of the effort are presented here and they include some major changes:
• The electro-optically active conjugated polymers have attracted many scientists
during the last decade and approach commercial uses as display
materials. The newly written Chap. 7 deals with the physical basis of the
electrooptic response and in addition discusses the spectacular electrical
conduction properties of conjugated polymers created by doping.
• Quite peculiar properties are also shown by polyelectrolytes. They became
popular in particular by their use as superabsorbers. Many researchers,
both theoreticians and experimentalists, are fascinated by the ordering
phenomena caused by the Coulomb forces. Polyelectrolyte properties are
now discussed in different chapters of the book, in Sects. 3.3, 8.4.2 and 9.2.
• The basic understanding of melt crystallization, a classical field of polymer
physics, has changed during the last decade; new experiments have provided
novel insights. As a consequence, Chap. 5 was completely rewritten.
It presents the new results in a selection of figures, formulates the deduced
laws and also includes in Sect. 5.3.1 the – not yet generally accepted – ‘multistage
model’ developed as an explanation of all the new observations.
• Chapter 10 also includes some substantial changes, again triggered by
progress in understanding. Some principles governing shear deformation
in semicrystalline polymers were revealed and enabled the construction of
a mechanic-rheological model (Sect. 10.1).