Themed collection Polymer Chemistry 15th anniversary regional spotlight collection: Asia-Pacific

Molecular descriptors and machine learning are useful tools for extracting structure–property relationships from large, complex polymer data, and accelerating the design of novel polymers with tailored functionalities.

Biodegradable polymers are advantageous over non-biodegradable polymers in terms of degradation. Fabrication of bio-based polymers to mimic petroleum-based polymers, is believed to be an effective way to overcome the white pollution.

The introduction of dynamic covalent and physical crosslinks into diolefin-based elastomers improves mechanical and self-healing properties. The presence of dynamic crosslinks also helps in the reprocessing of elastomers.

In this review, we provide an overview of six major techniques to tune the sensitivity and specificity of polydiacetylene-based sensors.

Slow release fertilizer hydrogels combine fertilizer and hydrogel into one system.

The recent advances achieved in the study of various stimuli-responsive polymers derived from natural amino acids have been reviewed.

Unimolecular micelles have high functionalities, encapsulation capabilities and site specific confinement abilities in various applications.

Self-assembling peptides with many potential biomedical applications.

Recent studies of functional polyimides for memory applications are reviewed, mostly focusing on the relationship between the polymer structure and the switching phenomena.

Single-cyclic (ring) and multi-cyclic polymers, having programmed chemical structures, have now become obtainable with guaranteed purity by newly developed synthetic protocols. By making use of these topological polymers, unusual properties and functions for polymer materials have now been revealed based on their cyclic topologies, i.e., topology effects, unattainable either by linear or branched counterparts.

This review summarizes the recent advances of substituted polyacetylene chemistry, including new polymerization catalysts and the properties and functions of the polymers.

This review highlights examples of recent applications of both the radical-mediated and base/nucleophile-initiated thiol-ene reactions in polymer and materials synthesis. Initial discussion focuses on mechanistic aspects of these reactions and also notes some of the structural considerations, with respect to reactants, that should be considered when practising such chemistries.

True effects of internal tertiary amines on disulfide exchange in cross-linked networks are explored, which provides the knowledge for the creation of functional materials with efficient bond exchange properties.

For the first time, we report 3D printing of RAFT-based formulations to fabricate functional objects in a layer-by-layer fashion.

Polymerization-Induced Self-Assembly (PISA) – control over the morphology of nanoparticles for drug delivery applications.

The temperature dependence of DOSY molar mass determination is discussed.

This paper demonstrated that the hues of both neutral and oxidised colours of isoindigo-based donor–acceptor polymers could be tuned subtly by means of variation of the number and type of donor groups.

Herein we present a photoreactive chalcone moiety that can be synthesized at a scale of several grams with ease, and can efficiently undergo a [2 + 2] photocycloaddition with light close to 500 nm as determined by an action plot.

Elastomeric vitrimer materials with tunable cross-link densities are prepared using cross-linking precursor polyesters with multiple COOH side groups in the presence of diepoxy cross-linkers and trans-esterification catalysts.

3D-printable self-healing oxime gels have been reinforced by cryogelation, making these gels mechanically tuneable, macroporous, and doubly dynamic.

A new solution-processable polymeric emitter containing non-conjugated cyclohexane units was developed for high-performing TADF-OLEDs.

GG-g-(AA-co-AM-co-APA) IPN superadsorbent, characterization of loaded microstructures and individual/synergistic adsorption mechanism of MB/SF/Pb(II)/Cd(II)/Cu(II) are reported.

We provide the results of a critical literature survey on the reported sizes of single chain polymer nanoparticles (SCNPs) employing different techniques.

Dihydroxyanthraquinone derivatives can be used as versatile blue-light-sensitive photoinitiators for cross-linked free radical photopolymerization, RAFT photopolymerization, and cationic photopolymerization.

Epoxy nanocomposites are fabricated by using diamine-functionalized GO and exhibit high T_g, tensile strength, and crosslink density.

Tunable LCST of PNIPAM–IL copolymers.

New self-healing thermosetting epoxy polymers were synthesised from a diamine cross-linker containing Diels–Alder adducts and a widely used epoxy monomer, DGEBA. The self-healing property of the new epoxy polymer was shown by complete elimination of cracks after the process of retro-DA and DA reactions.

CO₂/propylene oxide copolymerization in the presence of chain transfer agents affords PPC-diols which are converted to polyurethanes.

We report a facile and green environment-friendly approach for aqueous functionalization of boron nitride nanotubes through the bio-inspired protein, dopamine.

Polymer electrolytes based on poly(vinylidenefluoride-hexafluoropropylene) (PVdF-HFP), lithium trifluoromethanesulfonate (LiTf) and ethylene carbonate (EC) were prepared. The highest ionic conductivity achieved at room temperature was for PVdF-HFP + LiTf : EC (60 : 40) with the conductivity ∼10⁻³ S cm⁻¹.