Themed collection RSC Applied Polymers HOT Article Collection

This perspective highlights key challenges and opportunities in the rapidly evolving field of confined polymers and their practical applications, with special focus on those related to optoelectronic and thermoelectric devices.

This review highlights the formation mechanism, structural regulation and applications of HCPs by external cross-linking methods.

This review outlines the progress of SSSPs from fabrications and structures to modifications and applications since the advent of polyborosiloxane.

A polymer coating autonomously reports damage via fluorescence from a force-induced retro-Diels–Alder reaction. The optical signal correlates with impact energy, enabling real-time, equipment-free damage detection, even in pigmented coatings.

Photopolymerizable and degradable polyimides from liquid resins were developed, using existing economic chemical feedstocks, as flexible substrates to mitigate the e-waste crisis.

Hybrid hydrogels based on sulfated alginate are very resilient to deformation and exhibit high levels of energy dissipation.

BN doping improved UHMWPE's thermal conductivity but caused poor interfaces, while thermal annealing partially healed the filler–matrix interface and restored its breakdown strength.

This paper reports a new method for cross-linking rubbers and its application to direct adhesion, by introducing triazolinedione moieties into a polyisoprene followed by adding zinc dimethacrylate with the aim of forming dissociative cross-links.

This work demonstrates the application of pilot-scale surface functionalization of cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) by aqueous grafting-through polymerization and subsequent spray drying in 3D printed poly(lactic acid) (PLA) composites.

A variety of PE derivatives containing different substituents can be prepared by Mitsunobu post-functionalization, which can effectively improve the dielectric properties and enhance the dielectric breakdown strength of the PE matrix.

Tetralactam macrocycles that selectively bind gold ions have been exploited to construct porous organic polymers (POPs) and the capabilities of the latter for gold adsorption are demonstrated.

Conformal sub-micron coatings of an ion-conducting polymer network are obtained on porous micron-scaled architectures using surface-confined electrochemistry.

This study combines ¹H NMR and chemometrics to determine optimal processing conditions for aromatic disulfide-based vitrimers, revealing a correlation between model reactions and vitrimer networks.