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I'm approaching chemistry and I read on Wikipedia that

The modern concept of polymers as covalently bonded macromolecular structures was proposed in 1920 by Hermann Staudinger"

But then the article goes on and it says:

Historically, products arising from the linkage of repeating units by covalent chemical bonds have been the primary focus of polymer science; emerging important areas of the science now focus on non-covalent links.

So now I'm wondering, are there polymers whose monomers are bonded in other ways?

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    $\begingroup$ Look up Titan and Hydro; also nanopolymers are an interesting read: physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2007/jan/19/… $\endgroup$ – Berry Holmes May 17 '17 at 9:12
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    $\begingroup$ A very interesting possibility is to have a large amount of cyclic molecules interlocking with two (or more) neighbours each, like links in a chain. In this case the monomers (each individual ring) would not directly rely on any kind of bonding whatsoever between the rings to stay together, but would be held in such a way due to the "impenetrability" of matter. I think the main effect keeping the polymer together would be the Pauli exclusion principle, which is a rather unique situation. Though it would be marvellous to study such a polymer, it is a distant synthetic dream. $\endgroup$ – Nicolau Saker Neto May 17 '17 at 13:51
  • $\begingroup$ Circular DNA has the properties @Nicolau_Saker_Neto is talking about. The two strands of double-stranded DNA are twisted around each other, and in circular DNA, you can't separated them without breaking covalent bonds, but they are not connected by covalent bonds. $\endgroup$ – Karsten Theis Jan 24 at 20:41
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    $\begingroup$ The second quote is ambiguous. It could be talking about the importance of the (non-covalent) links between the polymer chains. $\endgroup$ – matt_black Apr 19 at 11:01

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