Synthesis and properties of fluorinated benzotriazole‐based donor‐acceptor‐type conjugated polymers via Pd‐catalyzed direct CH / CH coupling polymerization

Cross-Dehydrogenative Coupling Polymerization via C-H Activation for the Synthesis of Conjugated Polymers

Owing to their versatile (opto)electronic properties, conjugated polymers have found application in several organic electronic devices. Cross-coupling reactions such as Stille, Suzuki, Kumada couplings, and direct arylation reactions have proved to be effective for their synthesis. More atom-efficient oxidative direct arylation polymerization has also been reported for making homopolymers. However, growing interest toward donor-acceptor polymers has led to the recent emergence of cross-dehydrogenative coupling (CDC) polymerization to synthesize alternating copolymers without any prefunctionalization of monomers. Metal-catalyzed cross-coupling of two simple arenes via double C-H activation, or of an arene with an alkene via oxidative Heck-type reaction have been used so far for CDC polymerization. In this article, we discuss the development of CDC polymerization protocols along with the relevant small molecule CDC reactions for an improved understanding of these reactions.

Synthesis of π-Conjugated Polymers Containing Benzotriazole Units via Palladium-Catalyzed Direct C-H Cross-Coupling Polycondensation for OLEDs Applications

Four D-π-A conjugated polymers, namely P1-P4, which contain benzotriazole building blocks in their backbone as acceptor, are synthesized via palladium-catalyzed direct C-H cross-coupling polycondensation of 5,6-difluorobenzotriazole with different thiophene derivatives, including 3-octylthiophene, 2,2'-bithiophene, thieno[3,4-b][1,4]dioxine, and 4,4-dioctyl-4H-silolo-[3,2-b:4,5-b']dithiophene as donor units, respectively. Taking the polymer P1 as an example, the chemical structure of the polymer is demonstrated by 1H and 19F NMR spectra. The optical, electrochemical, and thermal properties of these polymers are assessed by UV-vis absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry (CV), and thermal gravimetric analysis (TGA), respectively. DFT simulations of all polymers are also performed to understand their physicochemical properties. Furthermore, P1 and P2, which have relatively higher molecular weights and better fluorescent quantum efficiency than those of P3 and P4, are utilized as lighting emitters for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), affording promising green and red luminescence with 0.07% and 0.14% of maximum external quantum efficiency, respectively, based on a device with an architecture of ITO/PEDOT:PSS/PTAA/the polymer emitting layer/TPBi/LiF/Al.