A Direct C–H Coupling Method for Preparing π-Conjugated Functional Polymers with High Regioregularity

摘要

Highly regioregular conducting polymers such as poly(3-substituted thiophene)s (rrP3STs) are an important class of π-conjugated polymers that can be used in plastic electronic devices such as solar cells and field-effect transistors. But the current state of the art syntheses of rrP3STs all involve transition-metal-catalyzed cross-coupling of a heteroaryl halide or pseudohalide with a heteroaryl organometallic reagent. In this work, an efficient and mild method was developed using direct cross-coupling of sp~(2) C–H bonds. More importantly, the method not only gave generally high regioregularity (up to 99%) but also can be applied for a series of substrate compounds with various structures and substituted groups. This should provide a general and direct way for the easy access to many functional/conducting polymers.