Abstract

Application of Continuous Flow Processes for the Synthesis of Conjugated Polymers with Precise Control over Critical Molecular Design Parameters

Anil Kumar, Professor, IIT Bombay

In the last three decades, conjugated polymers have significantly evolved from being an academic curiosity to being an important commercial material. Organic electronics commonly refers to the optoelectronic devices based on small organic molecules or conjugated polymers. It is leading to a new revolution of so called "pervasive electronics" wherein electronic devices will become more personal and become an integral part of our life. This will be possible because of the ease with which the properties of organic semiconductors can be fine-tuned along with the low cost of production and fabrication. Though small molecules have played an important role in organic optoelectronic devices, conjugated polymers still remain more attractive due to their ability to form thin films which are thermally, chemically and environmentally stable. However, large scale syntheses with controlled molecular properties still remains a major challenge in this area. Continuous flow synthesis provides a potential alternative to batch synthesis because of its inherent advantages such as very efficient heat exchange, high batch to batch reproducibility, fast mixing, high throughput, safety, and the ability to do multistep telescoping synthesis. In this presentation, I will discuss some of our recent results in this direction with particular emphasis on the large scale synthesis and characterization of Regioregular Poly(3-hexylthiophene) and Poly(3,4-Propylenedioxythiophene-dialkyl) with precise control over critical molecular design parameters as well as synthesis of conjugated polymer nanofibers via Continuous Flow Synthesis.