New Modular Approaches to Strained Ferrocenophanes and Metallopolymers

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The development of synthetic organic polymers during the last century had a tremendous impact on the advancement of society. To date, our modern life would be unthinkable without carbon-based polymers. However, as approximately 80% of all chemical elements are metals, there remains an enormous potential for the application of new metal-containing polymers, so-called metallopolymers. As many small molecules, extended solids, and biological systems owe their interesting and useful properties to the presence of metals, early on, scientists were fascinated by the idea of assembling metals into polymers. However, this area of polymer chemistry had been held back for many decades because of challenging problems, such as synthetic procedures, purification issues, lack of suitable starting materials, and characterization issues. Many of these issues have been resolved or improved upon during the last two decades so that some applications of metallopolymers have started to emerge. Despite the impressive progress in this area, there is a pressing need to develop new monomers and polymerization methodologies and protocols so that the enormous potential that the periodic table of elements offers for metallopolymers can be realized in the decades to come. This discovery grant research program addresses the current shortcomings of polyferrocene chemistry by proposing the preparation of new strained sandwich compounds. These species will be used for the fabrication of new metallopolymers.