Levulinic acid: a sustainable platform chemical for novel polymer architectures

Levulinic acid is a multipurpose platform chemical that is currently used in a wide variety of applications. The potential of levulinic acid is formidable, as can be seen by the diversity and quantity of literature regarding its transformation into different chemicals. Development in industrial production of levulinic acid from lignocellulosic biomass has resulted in a surge of interest in levulinic acid as a cheap, readily available, biobased material. This minireview will analyse the application of levulinic acid as a reagent in polymer chemistry. Levulinic acid has been used in step-growth polymerization, chain-growth polymerization, as a post polymerization functionality, and finally as a method to introduce post polymerisation modificationto sustainable polymers.