TELECHELIC POLYMERS - NEW DEVELOPMENTS

Telechelic polymers are polymers that carry reactive endgroups. The main interest in these compounds is their use as building blocks for the production of segmented copolymers and polymer networks. In the past decade a large number of new synthetic methods for the preparation of well-defined telechelics have been described. This was in great part due to the recent developments of new living polymerizations whereby a large number of polymeric structures became accessible in the form of end-functionalized derivatives; but more 'classical' methods, such as stepwise polymerizations, are also still used to produce interesting new telechelics. The present review describes these new developments.