Current Standing on Radical Ring-Opening Polymerisations of Cyclic Ketene Acetals as Homopolymers and Copolymers with one Another.

Radical Ring-opening polymerisation (RROP) of cyclic ketene acetals (CKAs) emerges to be a valuable polymerisation technique. In attracting more attention, RROP has seen a new spike in publications, which we will put into perspective. This review will hence address the progress made on the amount of available CKAs and the synthetic strategies to get them. In grouping the available monomers into distinct categories, the enormous variety of available CKAs will be highlighted. Polymerisations of CKAs without vinylenes has the potential to yield fully biodegradable polymers, which is why this kind of polymerisations are the focus of this review. Detailing the current understanding of the mechanism, the various side reactions will be noted and also their effect on the overall properties of the final polymers. Current attempts to control the ring-retaining and branching reactions will be discussed as well. In addition to the polymerisation itself, the available materials will be discussed as well as homopolymers, copolymers of CKAs and block-copolymers with pure CKA-blocks have significantly widened the range of possible applications of materials from RROP. Altogether this review highlights the progress in the entire field of RROP just of CKAs to give a holistic overview over the field. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.