New polymerization method for highly efficient materials in organic electronics

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The last ten years have witnessed significant advances in organic electronics. Unique features such as low-cost manufacturing processes, lightweight, and mechanical flexibility should lead to cheap and efficient printed devices for renewable energy production (solar cells) or electronic devices (transistors). However, the emergence of this important research field is strongly linked to the availability of reliable polymerization methods (i.e. Stille, Suzuki, Heck, etc.) to afford well-defined and reproducible polymeric semiconductors. However, these state-of-the-art methods generally involve organometallic reagents which create metal waste and/or require extra synthetic steps. To solve these problems, greener and cheaper synthetic procedures would be a great asset. Along these lines, we recently developed a new polymerization method called direct heteroarylation. We successfully obtained well-defined, tin-free, and high molecular weight (not attainable with classical procedures) thieno[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6-dione (TPD)-based copolymers which are among the most important materials for plastic solar cells and field-effect transistors. Following these first promising results, we want to further explore the synthesis of known and new TPD-based copolymers but we also intend to investigate and optimize the synthesis of various other semiconducting polymers. Mechanistic studies will also be performed to better understand and control the selectivity of this new polymerization method. Most polymers will be tested in various types of solar cells and transistors and the most promising ones will be produced on a larger scale by our industrial partner. Overall, this project should lead to highly innovative and unique polymerization methods that should contribute to the implementation of plastic electronics.