Brush Polymers Containing Semiconducting Polyene Backbones: Graft-Through Synthesis via Cyclopolymerization and Conformational Analysis on the Coil-to-Rod Transition

Eun-Hye Kang, In-Hwan Lee, and Tae-Lim Choi
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/mz3002897

Conjugated backbone brush polymers were synthesized by first using a 1,6-heptadiyne with an alcohol group as an initiator to polymerize L-lactide or E-caprolactone by ring opening polymerization. These macromonomers were polymerized to brushes through cyclopolymerization with the Grubbs-Hoveyda catalyst. The resulting brushes were semiconducting with a bandgap of less than 2.0 eV as determined from UV-vis spectra. Time-dependent Mark-Houwink-Sakurada plots from SEC-viscometry suggested the brushes tend to extend over time. They also characterized their polymers through GPC-MALS, differential scanning calorimetry, and AFM.