Polyethylene Glycol PEG
PEG, PEO, or POE refers to an oligomer or polymer of ethylene oxide. The three names are chemically synonymous, but historically PEG is preferred in the biomedical field, whereas PEO is more prevalent in the field of polymer chemistry. Because different applications require different polymer chain lengths, PEG has tended to refer to oligomers and polymers with a molecular mass below 20,000 g/mol, PEO to polymers with a molecular mass above 20,000 g/mol, and POE to a polymer of any molecular mass. PEG and PEO are liquids or low-melting solids, depending on their molecular weights.
PEGs are prepared by polymerization of ethylene oxide and are commercially available over a wide range of molecular weights from 300 g/mol to 10,000,000 g/mol. While PEG and PEO with different molecular weights find use in different applications, and have different physical properties (e.g. viscosity) due to chain length effects, their chemical properties are nearly identical.
Different forms of PEG are also available, depending on the initiator used for the polymerization process – the most common initiator is a monofunctional methyl ether PEG, or methoxypoly(ethylene glycol), abbreviated mPEG. Lower-molecular-weight PEGs are also available as purer oligomers, referred to as monodisperse, uniform, or discrete. Very high purity PEG has recently been shown to be crystalline, allowing determination of a crystal structure by x-ray diffraction. Since purification and separation of pure oligomers is difficult, the price for this type of quality is often 10-1000 fold that of polydisperse PEG.
PEG is used in E liquid but not very often as an alternative to Mono Propylene Glycol. The reason PEG isn't used more often is because it does not give the throat hit that PG gives and it is quite viscous so it doesn't help reduce the viscosity of e liquid the same as PG does.