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This review covers fundamental developments and selected applications of SEC and related techniques abstracted by Chemical Abstracts and Medline from 1996 to 1997 inclusive and is a continuation of our previous review (A8). Suggestions are always welcome for improving coverage of topics.The authors gratefully acknowledge our respective companies and families for their support and assistance during the preparation of this review. We are especially thankful to Thomas C. Johns (DuPont) for the literature search strategies and Rebecca Pennington (DuPont) and Wanda Mayhew for their excellent typing skills. BOOKS, PROCEEDINGS, AND REVIEWSDuring this review period, only one book has been published dedicated to preparative SEC, with a focus on Sephadex LH-20 (A1). Conference proceedings on SEC and related techniques have been sponsored by the ACS Division of Polymeric Material Science and Engineering (A2), the International GPC Symposium (A3), the 10th Bratislava International Conference on Macromolecules (A4, A5), Rapra (A6), and the International Symposium on Polymer Analysis and Characterization (A7).Reviews on specific SEC topics and applications are covered in the appropriate sections of this article. The Selected Applications section lists specific reviews based on polymer type. Barth and co-workers (A8) presented comprehensive coverage of SEC literature from 1994 to 1995; the present review is a continuation of that format. General reviews on SEC can be found in refs A9 and A10. Machate (A11) discussed various chromatographic approaches for the characterization of coating resins, including SEC. Historical perspectives of SEC were presented by Porath (A12), who dealt with packings, and by Barth (A13) and Benoit (A14), who considered calibration approaches. Henry (A15) reviewed recent innovations in SEC and instrument design. Belenkii et al. (A16) described nonstandard methods based on SEC, such as critical chromatography, membrane chromatography, TLC, and microbore SEC.