Conjugated polymers developed from alkynes

Abstract The numerous merits of conjugated polymers (CPs) have encouraged scientists to develop a variety of synthetic routes to CPs with diverse structures and functionalities. Among the large scope of substrates, alkyne plays an important role in constructing polymers with conjugated backbones. In addition to some well-developed reactions including Glaser–Hay and Sonogashira coupling, azide/thiol-yne click reaction and cyclotrimerization, some novel alkyne-based reactions have also been explored such as oxidative polycoupling, decarbonylative polycoupling and multicomponent tandem polymerizations. This review focuses on the recent progress on the synthetic methodology of CPs in the last five years using monomers with two or more triple bonds and some of their high-technological applications. Selected examples of materials properties of these CPs are given in this review, such as fluorescence response to chemical or physical stimuli, magnetism, white light emission, cell imaging and bioprobing. Finally, a short perspective is raised in regard to the outlook of the preparation methodologies, functionalities as well as potential applications of CPs in the future.