Ketene comes in from the cold

Researchers in the US and Korea have shown how an unusual functional group, which has been largely neglected in materials chemistry, can be incorporated into polymers to give the polymer both a reactive handle for attaching other molecules and a route to cross-linking adjacent polymer chains.

The ketene group, -C=C=O, is capable of rich and diverse chemistry, says Craig Hawker of the University of California, Santa Barbara, who led the research with Bongjin Moon of Sogang University in Seoul, but has not been widely exploited in polymer chemistry. 'We speculate that polymer chemists have always viewed ketenes as simply too reactive to handle and too difficult to generate,' says Hawker.  More...

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2010/January/31011002.asp