Development of Novel Direct Arylation Methodology for the Synthesis of Conjugated Polymers

Abstract

Conjugated polymers (CP) represent an important class of materials in the field of organic electronics. From the seminal Nobel prize-winning studies on the semiconducting properties of polyacetylene in the 1970s, the development of CP for various novel applications has increased tremendously over the past two decades. However, although much focus has been on optimizing material performance in devices such as organic-based transistors and photovoltaics, there has been less study on the optimization of atom-economical polymerization methodology. C-H functionalization can provide a pathway towards reducing the amount of synthetic steps and waste produced via traditional aryl coupling reactions (Stille, Suzuki, Kumada, etc.). Specifically, direct arylation polymerization (DArP) can allow for more cost-effective and environmentally responsible syntheses that would be more amenable to industrial scale-up of these technologies. The following dissertation presents original research to develop new conditions for DArP.