Themed collection Smart Inorganic Polymers

Guest editors Anne-Marie Caminade, Evamarie Hey-Hawkins and Ian Manners introduce the Smart Inorganic Polymers issue of Chemical Society Reviews

The development of metal–organic frameworks may transform into a very promising area, namely, obtaining quantum and nonlinear metamaterials using chemical methods.

Polymetallaynes of late transition metal elements have aroused considerable research attention. This Review article highlights the structure–property–function relationships of this class of metallopolymers and their emerging applications in electronic, optical and magnetic devices.

This comprehensive review covers polyferrocenylsilanes (PFSs), a well-established, readily accessible class of main chain organosilicon metallopolymer. The focus is on the recent advances involving PFS homopolymers and block copolymers and the article covers the synthesis, properties, and applications of these fascinating materials.

This review serves as a brief introduction to phospholes and discusses their unique favorable properties for application in organic electronic materials.

The basic concepts and synthetic strategies leading to metallo-supramolecular polymers as well as the scope and limitation in characterizing such materials are discussed in this review.

A survey of the most recent progress in the biomedical applications of metal-containing polymers is given.

The essentials of the synthetic chemistry of poly(organo)phosphazenes are detailed in this tutorial review, with a particular focus on the recent advances in this field.

The review focuses on the development of hybrid organic–inorganic π conjugated, silane, siloxane and coordination polymers containing boron clusters, which have received considerable academic and technological interest due to the combination of the electronic, optical and thermal properties of traditional inorganic materials with desirable properties of organic plastics, including mechanical flexibility and low production costs.

Charges make the difference in the arrangement of smart polymer chains and networks.

Polystannanes are a unique class of materials as those inorganic polymers (more precisely organometallic polymers) appear to be hitherto the only characterized polymers with a backbone of covalently bound metal atoms.

Among inorganic dendrimers, phosphorhydrazone dendrimers and carbosilane dendrimers are the most widely used as nanotools for catalysis, materials, and biology.