Oxidative polycondensation reaction

In the last few years, some monomers such as phenols, anilines, pyridines, naphtols, Schiff bases and azo phenols have been subjected to oxidative polycondensation (OP) using NaOCl, H2 O2 and air O2 as the oxidants in aqueous alkaline or aqueous acidic medium. This resulted in oligomers with potential useful properties. The major reason behind these investigations was the economic and environmentally benign reaction process of OP. Therefore, this review diccusses OP and the obtained oligomers in detail. Additionally, chemical structures, physical properties, UV-Vis, FT-IR, 1H- and 13C-NMR analyses, thermal properties and coupling mechanism of all oligomers synthesized via OP are discussed and compared to those of polymers prepared by other oxidative methods. The probable potential applications of the obtained polymers and oligomers, such as antistatic and semi-conductivity, fluorescent, photoresist, opto-electronic, electrochromic, antimicrobial and photoresponsive properties, are also discussed in the last section.