Monofunctional carbonyls are readily available from fossil fuels and biomass on earth. They are cornerstones of organic chemistry but are rarely used as monomers for polymer materials. Here, we demonstrate a versatile single-atom polymerization (SAP) method using monofunctional carbonyls as building blocks, where bifunctionalization of monofunctional carbonyls is critical. Through SAP, a series of alcohol-containing polymers, which are difficult to synthesize by other traditional polymerization methodologies, are prepared. These polymers exhibit structure-specific luminescence, and polytriphenylethanol represents a rare type of aggregation-induced emission luminogen without traditional chromophores. This can be used for supersensitive explosive detection at the picogram level. SAP also results in polymerization-induced emission behavior from nonemissive monomers. Due to the cornerstone significance and extreme availability of carbonyls and unique polymer functionalities, this may allow us to exploit earth’s carbonyl resources more efficiently.

单官能羰基很容易从地球上的化石燃料和生物质中获得。它们是有机化学的基石，但很少用作聚合物材料的单体。在这里，我们展示了一种使用单官能羰基化合物作为构建基块的通用单原子聚合（SAP）方法，其中单官能羰基化合物的双官能化至关重要。通过SAP，制备了一系列含酒精的聚合物，这些聚合物很难用其他传统的聚合方法合成。这些聚合物表现出特定于结构的发光，而聚三苯乙醇代表了一种没有传统生色团的稀有类型的聚集诱导的发光原。可用于皮克级的超灵敏爆炸物检测。SAP还导致非发射性单体发生聚合诱导的发射行为。由于重要的基石和羰基化合物的极高可用性以及独特的聚合物功能，这可能使我们能够更有效地利用地球上的羰基资源。