Synthetic approaches for the preparation of cyclic polymers

Abstract

Despite decades of studies devoted to the unique physical properties and potential applications of cyclic polymer topologies, their exploration has remained limited because of synthetic inefficiencies and acyclic impurities. Many recently developed synthetic techniques offer efficient routes to well-defined cyclic macromolecules to answer this need. This tutorial review aims to provide a concise overview of the most significant synthetic contributions in this field, and highlight the relative advantages and disadvantages of each approach.