A new family of polyolefins containing various aryl ether units have been designed and synthesized, and their thermal properties were studied. We prepared six acyclic diene monomers di(undec-10-enyloxy) aryl ether by a two-step approach and the corresponding homopolymers and copolymers with 1,9-decadiene by ADMET. Subsequent hydrogenation gave the corresponding ethylene-co-aryl ether polymers. The structures of these polymers were confirmed by H-1 NMR, C-13 NMR and FT-IR. Additionally, crystallization behaviors and thermal properties were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-ray diffraction and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA). The results show that incorporation of these aryl ether units has improved the thermal stability of polymers. And these polymers show a tendency of semicrystallinity to amorphous state with the insertion of more rigid phenyl rings in functional sites of polymers' main chain. Interestingly, DSC analysis reveals that a sequence of melting/crystallization phenomenon occurs in the crystalline saturated homopolymers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.