Polythiophene precursors

A. Rajca, US Patent 6,515,144 (February 4, 2003) Assignee The Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska Utility Polythiophene Precursor... 

Park YD, Lee HS, Choi YJ, Kwak D, Cho JH, Lee S, Cho K (2009) Solubility-induced ordered polythiophene precursors for high-performance organic thin-fihn transistors. Adv Funct Mater 19 1200-1206... 

The intractability of the conducting polymers makes characterization difficult and this in turn slows the development of better polymers. The precursor routes are very attractive because they provide intermediate polymers which can be properly characterized. A precursor for polypyrrole or polythiophene would greatly enhance our ability to understand the structure of the polymers produced electrochemically. 

Polymer science is underdeveloped in terms of descriptions of the structure and properties of stiff-chain polymers. The conducting polymers fall mostly within this blind spot. They also present a number of novel possibilities such as the conversion from a flexible-chain precursor to a rigid-chain polymer, and the conversion between doped and undoped states in the soluble polythiophenes. Likewise, solid-state physics has yet really to tackle the transport of electrons in, and between, disordered, twisted chains. For each of the disciplines involved, the explosion of interest in conducting polymers has brouht a host of new question and new ideas. The process is far from over. 

Additional polythiophene n-conjugated polymer precursors were prepared by Reuter [4], (V), and Groenendaal [5], (VI), and used in electroconductive... 

Orientation of the polymer chains can be obtained by different methods. Highly oriented films of poly acetylene have been made by performing polymerization in a liquid crystal 11,2]. It has also been shown that it is possible to attain highly oriented films of polyacetylene 13] and poly(p-phenylene vinylene) [4] by stretching their precursors. Kaneto et al. 15] have oriented polythiophene by stretching a film, prepared electrochemically on In-Sn oxide (ITO)-coated poly(ethyleneterephthalate) films. The processability of the recently developed poly(3-alkylthiophenes) [6-8] makes this class of polymers suitable for stretching. Yoshino et al. [9] have shown that it is possible to orient poly(3-alkylthiophene), both as free-standing films and in a blend with an elastomer. 

Advanced Functional Polythiophenes Based on Tailored Precursors... 

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