Book Description

This volume summarizes the papers presented at the First Osaka University Macromolecular Symposium OUMS'93 on "Ordering in Macromolecular Systems", which was held at Senri Life Science Center, Osaka, Japan, on June 3 through June 6, 1993. The symposium covered the three topics, (1) Crystallization and Phase Transitions, (2) Polymer Liquid Crystals and (3) Block Copolymers, Polymer Blends and Surfaces, and invited leading scientists in these fields. At present any of these topics is a hot issue in itself and frequently taken up separately in many occasions. It is noted however that all these topics are correlated with each other with the keyword "Ordering" and their combination provides a unique feature of the present symposium in reflecting the interactions among investigators working in these important fields with the common ground expressed by the keyword "Ordering". Nineteen invited lectures and 40 posters of both experiment and theory were presented at the symposium, and the eighteen lectures and ten poster presentations contribute to this volume. In the first topic crystal structures and their transitions were discussed from kinetic as well as static points of view; attention was paid to give a molecular-level interpretation of the structure, phase transition and physical properties, using theories and simulations. The second topic was mainly concerned with static structures and thermodynamic properties of polymer liquid crystals including phase behaviours.