ABSTRACT
To understand polymer properties, especially thermomechanical behavior, one needs to know their basic physical properties such as packing density, free volume, cohesive energy density, chain mobility, glass transition temperature and, indeed, crosslink density in the case of networks. These properties are more or less directly linked to the chemical structure at the nanometric (molecular) and large (macromolecular) scale. If the material is heterogeneous, one also needs information describing this heterogeneity (supramolecular or morphological scale). The conceptual and experimental investigation tools differ strongly from one scale to another (Table 10.1); it is thus important to recognize that, to be fully efficient, an investigation on structure-property relationships in the field of networks must be multidisciplinary.
