Particles of polyacetylene and its derivatives: preparation and applications

How to prepare polymeric particles from acetylene and its derivatives, in particular in aqueous media, has remained as a challenging research topic for a rather long period. In recent years, this research area has achieved exciting progress and a variety of novel functional particles have been reported. However, there has not yet been a review article exclusively summarizing the progress. This article presents an overview on these advanced particles with emphasis on the preparation and their applications. The state-of-the-art preparation methods fall into two major groups: emulsion, precipitation and suspension polymerization approaches starting from monomers; and post-treatment of pre-formed polymers (i.e. self-assembly). The polymer particles were investigated in such applications as circuits, sensors, drug release and chiral-related processes, for instance, asymmetric catalysis, enantioselective crystallization, enantioselective release, amongst many others. This review article is expected to stimulate more unprecedented functional particles derived from acetylene and its derivatives.