Exploitation of Monofunctional Carbonyl Resources by Barbier Polymerization for Materials with Polymerization-Induced Emission

Summary Monofunctional carbonyls are readily available from fossil fuels and biomass on earth. They are cornerstones of organic chemistry but are rarely used as monomers for polymer materials. Here, we demonstrate a versatile single-atom polymerization (SAP) method using monofunctional carbonyls as building blocks, where bifunctionalization of monofunctional carbonyls is critical. Through SAP, a series of alcohol-containing polymers, which are difficult to synthesize by other traditional polymerization methodologies, are prepared. These polymers exhibit structure-specific luminescence, and polytriphenylethanol represents a rare type of aggregation-induced emission luminogen without traditional chromophores. This can be used for supersensitive explosive detection at the picogram level. SAP also results in polymerization-induced emission behavior from nonemissive monomers. Due to the cornerstone significance and extreme availability of carbonyls and unique polymer functionalities, this may allow us to exploit earth’s carbonyl resources more efficiently.