Tailor-Made Functional Polyolefins of Complex Architectures: Recent Advances, Applications, and Prospects

Polyolefins play a crucial role in the polymer industry because of their low-cost monomers and well-established production processes. Recent years have witnessed tremendous progress in direct and tandem copolymerization strategies that provide an opportunity of developing polyolefins bearing polar groups with distinctive architectures and properties. In this perspective, we first highlight new routes for the proficient synthesis of tailor-made functional polyolefins and briefly discuss their designing tactics. Then, we attempt to categorize these, recently appeared in the literature, innovative functional polyolefins on the basis of their applications. The prospected future applications of polar olefin copolymers include biomedical materials, catalysts, energy storage devices, and conductive polymers, which open up new arenas and paradigms for academic research and industrial products development. Critical issues concerning intelligent functional polyolefins and green chemistry are discussed, too.