Question

The polymer containing strong intermolecular forces like hydrogen bonding is:
A. Teflon
B. Nylon-6,6
C. Polystyrene
D. Natural rubber

Answer 1

Hint: Polymer is made up from two words called poly + mer where poly means many and mer means parts i.e. many parts. It refers to large molecules whose structure is composed of multiple repeating units. Synthetic and natural polymers play essential and important roles in everyday life due to their wide range of properties.

Complete Step by step solution: Polymers are generally called as the repeating units of monomers. Polymers can start from synthetic plastics like polystyrene and end to natural biopolymers like DNA and proteins which are essential for biological structure and function. Both types of polymers i.e. natural and synthetic are synthesized through polymerization of many small molecules called monomers. They have large molecular masses which have very distinct physical properties like elasticity, toughness and tendency to form amorphous and semi crystalline structures. Hydrogen bonding explains the formation of Hydrogen bonds. In which attraction between the molecules is explained by special class of attractive intermolecular forces which arises due to the dipole-dipole interaction between a hydrogen atom which is bonded to a highly electronegative atom and another highly electronegative atom lies in the neighborhood of the hydrogen atom. Now we have to look for polymers which have strong intermolecular forces like hydrogen bonding.
A. Teflon: Teflon is tetrafluoroethylene. It does not form hydrogen bonding as in this case hydrogen atom is not attached to any electronegative atom like O, F, N etc.
B. Nylon-6,6: It is a polyamide. It can form hydrogen bonds as the H atom is attached to amide N atom.
C. Polystyrene: It is a repeating unit of monomer styrene. It cannot form hydrogen bonding as in this case hydrogen is not attached with any electronegative atom.
D. Natural rubber: It is cis - 1,4-polyisoprene. It cannot form H bonds as H atom is not attached to N, O or F.

Thus, a polymer containing strong intermolecular forces like hydrogen bonding is Nylon-6,6.

Note: In a molecule when a hydrogen atom is linked to a highly electronegative atom it attracts the shared pair of electrons more by the result end of the molecules becomes slightly negative while the other end becomes slightly positive. The negative end of the molecule attracts the positive end of the other molecule and as a result a weak bond is formed between them. This bond is known as the hydrogen bond.