Technological watch

With increasing interest in developing sustainable polymers for a broad range of applications, isosorbide has emerged as an attractive renewable feedstock for high-performance materials. Developments in the production scale and cost of isosorbide have further stimulated research interest. Step-growth polymerization of isosorbide has yielded polymers with excellent properties and applications ranging from packaging to automobile parts to biomedical devices. However, challenges associated with direct use of isosorbide in step-growth polymerization remain, demanding new synthetic strategies for producing tailored polymers from this building block. In this trend article, recent advances in isosorbide production, polymerization, and applications will be highlighted with a focus on new step- and chain-growth strategies to synthesize isosorbide-based polymers.