An excess of elemental sulfur is generated annually from hydrodesulfurization in petroleum refining processes; however, it has a limited number of uses, of which one example is the production of sulfuric acid. Despite this excess, the development of synthetic and processing methods to convert elemental sulfur into useful chemical substances has not been investigated widely. Here we report a facile method (termed 'inverse vulcanization') to prepare chemically stable and processable polymeric materials through the direct copolymerization of elemental sulfur with vinylic monomers. This methodology enabled the modification of sulfur into processable copolymer forms with tunable thermomechanical properties, which leads to well-defined sulfur-rich micropatterned films created by imprint lithography. We also demonstrate that these copolymers exhibit comparable electrochemical properties to elemental sulfur and could serve as the active material in Li-S batteries, exhibiting high specific capacity (823 mA h g(-1) at 100 cycles) and enhanced capacity retention.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 122. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 07 April 2026.
All research outputs
#427,859
of 33,695,692 outputs
Outputs from Nature Chemistry
#186
of 4,042 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#2,451
of 242,014 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature Chemistry
#2
of 57 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 33,695,692 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 4,042 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 33.2. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 242,014 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 57 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 96% of its contemporaries.
