The emerging applications of click chemistry reactions in the modification of industrial polymers

Polymer modification has been practiced since the very early technological development of human kind by transforming natural resources into value-added commodities. Ever since the middle of the last century in which petroleum-based polymers indisputably became widespread in diverse technological applications, the advances in polymer modification increasingly yielded more scientific attention to impute different and mostly desirable properties to industrial polymers. By cutting across the traditional boundaries of laboratory scale synthesis of reactive polymers, the functionalization and modification of large scale-produced commodity polymers might provide unique opportunities in the fabrication of advanced materials. In this sense, efficient chemical methodologies always have great relevance in the covalent manipulation of polymer substrates to impart desired properties. In the current manuscript, we aim to highlight the emerging applications of highly versatile click chemistry-based strategies in the modification of major industrial polymers by analysing the synthetic approaches and the resulting material properties.