Applications of Functional Polymers

Posted by beauty33 on December 31st, 2020

Polymer functionalization aims at imparting new properties (e.g. chemical, biophysical, physicochemical or optoelectronic) to materials. Functional polymers have been developed for a wide range of diverse applications. These include organic catalysis (supported catalysts), medicine (red-blood-cell substitutes), optoelectronics (conducting polymers, magnetic polymers and polymers for nonlinear optics), biomaterials, paints and varnishes, building materials, photographic materials as well as lube and fuel additives. While it is not possible to enumerate all of the applications of functional polymers, some representative examples of functional polymers are listed below.

Polymer supported catalysts have advantages because of the ease of catalyst recovery and the opportunity for simultaneously using otherwise incompatible catalytic systems. Indeed, the immobilization of several catalysts onto a polymer matrix is a unique way of avoiding antagonistic reactions between them, and of allowing reagents to participate in a 'cascade' of reactive processes. For example, polymer-supported catalysts have been used as the Lewis acid catalysts in the carbocationic polymerization of isobutylene. After the reaction, polyisobutylene is obtained by simply filtering the supported catalyst. The reaction cycle can be repeated many times.

Metal containing polymers are useful for a wide range of applications including analysis and catalysis, optical and electronic devices, colorants and coatings, structural composites, ceramics, controlled-released medicaments, and biocides.

Photosensitive polymers can be applied in areas such as printing, electronics, paints, biomaterials, information recording, and UV curing inks. One of the major applications of photosensitive polymers is in the development of resist materials with submicron resolution for semiconductor fabrication. Resist science and technology is an expanding field, and there is an increasing demand for more sensitive photopolymers and exposure equipment. Thus, the new photosensitive polymers will continue to make significant contributions to electronic and photonics through improvements of material and related technologies, especially for deep-UV, electron beam, and X-ray lithography and chemical amplification resist systems.

Liquid crystalline polymers offer a range of properties that include ferroelectric behavior that has potential for fast switching devices, piezo- and pyroelectric properties. The ability of liquid crystalline polymers to improve hardness and impact strength can impact the coating industry. The self-assembling properties of liquid crystalline polymers coupled with the development of new block copolymers containing liquid crystalline units, which can also undergo microphase separation, could also yield new materials with increased strength.

Conducting polymers are polymers having a conjugated backbone structure that is capable of being doped to yield high electronic mobility and electrical conductivity. The delocalised electronic structures of 7c-conjugated polymers, which are responsible for their unusual electronic properties, tend to yield relatively stiff chains with little flexibility and with relatively strong inter-chain attractive interactions, which make them insoluble and non-processable. Such monomers have been modified to obtain polymers that are soluble in water and organic solvents. Potential applications include solid-state rechargeable batteries, "smart" windows, photo- or electrochromic materials, antistatic coating, sensors, photocells, and electromagnatic screening applications.

Some of these polymers have the ability to be electroluminescent for use in plastic light emitting diodes (LED). Optical components (including transmitter, receiver, modulator, couplers, multiplexing system, and data links) could be manufactured from specifically tailored functional polymers in the near future.

Functional polymers may be used for different types of chemical sensors, including acoustic wave sensors (bulk acoustic wave, surface acoustic wave, and flexural plate wave sensors), electronic conductance sensors (semiconducting and capacitance sensors), and calorimetric sensors.