Recent Progress on COS-derived Polymers

The synthesis of sulfur-containing polymer, a very promising functional material, has made a great progress in the past several years. This review is focused on the very recent advances in poly(monothiocarbonate)s derived from carbonyl sulfide (COS) and epoxides including biomass-derived epoxides. Of significance, metal-free catalyst systems, including triethyl borane/Lewis base pair and thiourea/Lewis base pair are developed for the alternating copolymerization of COS with epoxides. Thereof, the thiourea/Lewis base pair is highly active to the copolymerization of COS with epoxide in a living manner. Moreover, a series of crystalline poly(monothiocarbonate)s are presented, including the copolymers derived from COS with oxetane, ethylene oxide, enantiopure epichlorohydrin, and achiral meso-epoxides via enantioselective copolymerization. Based on these COS/epoxide copolymerization process, a variety of COS-based block copolymers with well-defined structure are presented.