Terminology for Dynamic Polymer Networks and Hydrogels

The field of dynamic covalent polymer networks, including hydrogels, is a rapidly developing area that involves researchers across several areas of chemistry (organic, catalysis, polymer) and beyond (physics, materials science, chemical and biomedical engineering).However, because this area has developed recently, a comprehensive set of terms describing these materials is utterly lacking in IUPAC terminology documents.As a result of rapid development of these materials across the world, confusion in the literature exists, including terms used synonymously in some papers that are defined as different classes in others.This project seeks to collect these terms and provide guidelines for their application in a Recommendations document to be published in Pure and Applied Chemistry.This will benefit the wide group of researchers working on dynamic polymer materials by providing a common language.