Vinyl polymers have been the focus of intensive research over the past few decades and are attractive materials owing to their ease of synthesis and their broad diversity of architectures, compositions and functionalities. Their carbon–carbon backbones are extremely resistant to degradation, however, and this property limits their uses. Degradable polymers are an important field of research in polymer science and have been used in a wide range of applications spanning from (nano)medicine to microelectronics and environmental protection. The development of synthetic strategies to enable complete or partial degradation of vinyl polymers is, therefore, of great importance because it will offer new opportunities for the application of these materials. This Review captures the most recent and promising approaches to the design of degradable vinyl polymers and discusses the potential of these materials for biomedical applications.

在过去的几十年中，乙烯基聚合物一直是深入研究的重点，由于其易于合成以及结构，组成和功能的广泛多样性，乙烯基聚合物是有吸引力的材料。它们的碳-碳主链极耐降解，但是这种性质限制了它们的使用。可降解聚合物是聚合物科学领域的重要研究领域，已被广泛用于从（纳米）医学到微电子学和环境保护的各种应用中。因此，开发能够完全或部分降解乙烯基聚合物的合成策略非常重要，因为它将为这些材料的应用提供新的机会。