Advancing organic electronics: Achieving reliable synthesis of conjugated polymers with various carrier polarities using a continuous flow reactor

• Published in: Chemical engineering journal (Lausanne, Switzerland : 1996) Switzerland : 1996), 2024-01, Vol.480, p.148016, Article 148016
• Main Authors: Kim, Youngrok, Lee, Chanseo, Seo, Dongyeol, Kim, Donguk, Kim, Felix S., Peterson, Gregory I., Hwang, Ye-Jin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Continuous flow reactor; D-A conjugated polymer; Flow chemistry; Organic electronic; Stille polycondensation
• ISSN: 1385-8947
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2023.148016

[Display omitted] •Six D-A conjugated polymers synthesized successfully in a continuous flow reactor.•Obtained high degree of polymerization (31 – 88) and excellent reproducibility.•High quality polymers synthesized using a single set of reaction parameters.•Flow synthesis as an ideal method to produce D-A conjugated polymers. Donor-acceptor (D-A) conjugated polymers often exhibit excellent performance in electronic and photonic applications, however, their synthesis remains a hurdle to achieving their wide-spread commercialization. While scalable and reproducible flow syntheses have emerged as promising candidates to address this issue, they have only been applied to a narrow scope of polymer types. In this study, we explore the synthesis of six different D-A conjugated polymers in a continuous flow reactor to determine how reaction and polymer parameters influence the degree of polymerization (DP) and quality of the resulting polymers. We found that we could successfully synthesize p-type, n-type, and ambipolar D-A conjugated polymers with a single set of reaction parameters. Only the reaction time required optimization to achieve high-DPs. Importantly, we found that we could achieve comparable DPs to batch reactions, but with higher yields and much shorter reaction times. High-quality polymers were also obtained, which was confirmed with optical and electrochemical properties measurements and by their performance in organic field-effect transistors. We expect this work to further establish flow synthesis as an ideal method to make D-A conjugated polymers, which may help facilitate their commercialization in high-performing organic devices.