Polystyrene is a polymer with repeating units , placing a phenyl side group on alternate backbone carbons. Addition polymerization retains the monomer's phenyl group while converting its carbon-carbon double bond into backbone bonds.
Polystyrene standards are used for organic-solvent size-exclusion chromatography. Their hydrodynamic size supplies a conditional SEC molar mass calibration; a different polymer of equal molar mass need not have the same coil size or elution volume.[ref]
New to topics? Read the docs here!