Polycondensation, also called step-growth polymerization, is a polymerization process that involves a chemical reaction between multifunctional monomer molecules. In a step-growth reaction, the growing chains may react with each other to form even longer chains. This applies to chains of all lengths. Thus, a monomer or dimer may react in just the same way as a chain hundreds of monomer units long. This is in contrast to a chain-growth polymerization, where only monomers may react with growing chains.

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