A brief overview of 40 years of metal-containing polymers.

Over the past few decades, we have seen a growing interest in the development of various classes of metal-contg. polymers. While polymers are traditionally carbon-based materials that contain only a few other elements, organometallic polymers could incorporate almost all the other elements of the periodic table. Thus, metal-contg. polymers include new materials for the 21st century. Along with this comes a diversity of syntheses, stabilities and properties. Since the 1960s, there have been many approaches to the synthesis of this class of polymers. This includes condensation, coordination, addn., radical and ring-opening processes. The importance of these metal-contg. polymers stems from their interesting catalytic, elec., optical, magnetic and biol. properties. In this presentation, we intend to give an overview of the recent advances in organometallic polymers.