Recent Developments in Sulfur-Containing Polymers

Currently, a lot of research efforts have been directed toward exploiting the special high-performance characteristics of polymers with sulfur in the backbone. Sulfur-containing polymers fall under various classes and cover an extremely broad property range. The impetus to their development resulted from the unique properties and success in their applications, depending upon the type of linkage introduced. This review basically sets out to explain the design, synthesis, properties, and applications of various sulfur-containing polymers especially polyamides, polyimides, poly(amide-imide)s, polybenzimidazoles, polyurethanes, polyesters, etc. Outstanding performance of these polymers came up from their structures having sulfur-based groups such as thiophene, sulfide, sulfone, thiazol, and thiourea. Thus these linkages endow special features to such functional polymers. The sulfur-containing polymers are also described here with reference to their relevance as optically active, liquid crystalline, flame retardant, and fuel cell materials. Several endeavors are underway to take advantage of incorporated sulfur moiety in the polymer backbone, as a consequence to ascertain their validity on the forefront of scientific investigations.