Ferroelectric polymers are key building blocks for flexible electronic devices, but lack functionality and ability to tune their ferroelectric response. Here the authors show a method to introduce functionality in ferroelectric polymers while preserving ferroelectricity and tune the ferroelectric response by incorporating insulating polymer chains.

Cyclic polymers can be usually accessed by ring-expansion and ring-closure approaches. Here, the authors report an alternative blocking-cyclization technique which enables the tunable synthesis of multicyclic polymers via commercial Ru-based Grubbs catalysts and conventional ring-opening metathesis polymerisation.

Large dielectric constants were measured for nylon 93. A displacement–electric hysteresis loop was obtained for a slowly cooled sample of nylon 93. The structure of nylon 93 was investigated in detail to clarify the origin of these unusual electric properties. The results obtained by X-ray diffraction, polarizing optical micrography, and differential scanning calorimetry indicated that α- and γ-crystals were formed in the slowly cooled and quenched samples, respectively, and the γ-crystals in the quenched samples were gradually changed into α-crystals by annealing.

Bacterial infections and antibiotic resistance are an increasing concern for the world. Here the authors report a class of cationic antimicrobial polymers that cluster local facial amphiphilicity from repeating units to enhance interactions with bacterial membranes without requiring a high unfavorable entropic loss.