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Synthesis of robust materials with tailor-made properties is one of the principal challenges in science. The unique properties of side-chain polymers with ferrocene units as pendants feature unprecedented chemical, optoelectronic, catalytic, and biological properties with potentials in case-specific applications as smart materials. Since atom-transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) is versatile and reportedly produces “well-defined” polymers with premediated molecular weights and narrow molecular weight distributions, we, in the current article, are summarizing ferrocene-containing side-chain polymers, synthesized via surface initiated ATRP (SI ATRP) technique. Fine-tuning of the molecular weights and its distribution further opens the scope of using the resulting homo, block- and copolymers in biosensing, where redox-active ferrocene moiety provides electrochemical sensitivity to the materials. Chemistry of polymer brushes grown over various surfaces like Indium Tin oxide (ITO), silicon wafer, gold, cellulose with ferrocene pendant functionality and its applications like glucose, DNA, miRNA, tumor biomarker, immune- and alkaline phosphatase sensing are discussed along with prospects on this field.
Vijayalakshmi et al. (Fri,) studied this question.