Question

Are all monomers in a polymer covalently bonded?

Answer 1

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 anyj 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. –

Answer 2

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