Recent Progress in the Development of New Acetylenic Polymers

Acetylenic polymers are a group of specialty materials with novel properties. In this paper, recent progress in the development of functional acetylenic polymers is summarized. These polymers are synthesized through different polymerization approaches such as Sonogashira polycoupling, decarbonylative chloroarylation polyaddition, and polycyclotrimerization. Efforts in the development of new monomers and catalyst exploration as well as reaction optimization have lead to a large quantity of linear and hyperbranched polymers with high molecular weights and good processability. The polymer functionalization is realized by incorporating functional units into the monomer structures, which endow the resulting polymers with fascinating properties such as aggregation-induced emission, optical nonlinearity, light refractivity, photosensitivity, photopatternability, redoxactivity, and magnetism.