01409 IUPAC Gold Book - crosslink 10.1351/goldbook.C01409 C01409 current 1 A small region in a macromolecule from which at least four chains emanate, and formed by reactions involving sites or groups on existing macromolecules or by interactions between existing macromolecules. The small region may be an atom, a group of atoms, or a number of branch points connected by bonds, groups of atoms, or oligomeric chains. In the majority of cases, a crosslink is a covalent structure but the term is also used to describe sites of weaker chemical interactions, portions of crystallites, and even physical entanglements. chains https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/C00946 macromolecule https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/M03667 oligomeric https://goldbook.iupac.org//terms/view/O04286 PAC, 1996, 68, 2287. 'Glossary of basic terms in polymer science (IUPAC Recommendations 1996)' on page 2298 (https://doi.org/10.1351/pac199668122287) https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/C01409/html https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/C01409/json https://goldbook.iupac.org/terms/view/C01409/plain Citation: 'crosslink' in IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology, 5th ed. International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry; 2025. Online version 5.0.0, 2025. 10.1351/goldbook.C01409 The IUPAC Gold Book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike CC BY-SA 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) for individual terms. If you are interested in licensing the Gold Book for commercial use, please contact the IUPAC Executive Director at executivedirector@iupac.org . The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) is continuously reviewing and, where needed, updating terms in the Compendium of Chemical Terminology (the IUPAC Gold Book). Users of these terms are encouraged to include the version of a term with its use and to check regularly for updates to term definitions that you are using. 2026-07-12T18:26:44+00:00