Thermodynamic synthesis of solution processable ladder polymers. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • The synthesis of a carbazole-derived, well-defined ladder polymer was achieved under thermodynamic control by employing reversible ring-closing olefin metathesis. This unique approach featured mild conditions and excellent efficiency, affording the ladder polymer backbone with minimum levels of unreacted defects. Rigorous NMR analysis on a 13C isotope-enriched product revealed that the main-chain contained less than 1% of unreacted precursory vinyl groups. The rigid conformation of the ladder-type backbone was confirmed by photophysical analysis, while the extended rod-like structure was visualized under scanning tunneling microscope. Excellent solubility of this polymer in common organic solvents allowed for feasible processing of thin films using solution-casting techniques. Atomic force microscopy and grazing incident X-ray scattering revealed a uniform and amorphous morphology of these films, in sharp contrast to the polycrystalline thin films of its small molecular counterpart.

published proceedings

  • Chem Sci

altmetric score

  • 11.008

author list (cited authors)

  • Lee, J., Rajeeva, B. B., Yuan, T., Guo, Z., Lin, Y., Al-Hashimi, M., Zheng, Y., & Fang, L.

citation count

  • 58

complete list of authors

  • Lee, Jongbok||Rajeeva, Bharath Bangalore||Yuan, Tianyu||Guo, Zi-Hao||Lin, Yen-Hao||Al-Hashimi, Mohammed||Zheng, Yuebing||Fang, Lei

publication date

  • February 2016