The development of chemically recyclable polymers with
desirable
properties is a long-standing but challenging goal in polymer science.
Central to this challenge is the need for reversible chemical reactions
that can equilibrate at rapid rates and provide efficient polymerization
and depolymerization cycles. Based on the dynamic chemistry of nucleophilic
aromatic substitution (SNAr), we report a chemically recyclable
polythioether system derived from readily accessible benzothiocane
(BT) monomers. This system represents the first example
of a well-defined monomer platform capable of chain-growth ring-opening
polymerization through an SNAr manifold. The polymerizations
reach completion in minutes, and the pendant functionalities are easily
customized to tune material properties or render the polymers amenable
to further functionalization. The resulting polythioether materials
exhibit comparable performance to commercial thermoplastics and can
be depolymerized to the original monomers in high yields.