Macrocyclic P3HT Obtained by Intramolecular McMurry Coupling of Linear Bis-Aldehyde Polymer: A Direct Comparison with Linear Homologue

• Published in: Macromolecules 2017-03, Vol.50 (5), p.1939-1949
• Main Authors: Delbosc, Nicolas, De Winter, Julien, Moins, Sébastien, Persoons, André, Dubois, Philippe, Coulembier, Olivier
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0024-9297; 1520-5835
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.macromol.6b02599

Different P3HT chain lengths have been synthesized, functionalized at both chain ends with aldehyde moieties and finally cyclized following the McMurry reaction in a pseudo high dilution process. The confirmation of the high yielded intramolecular coupling came from the decrease of the hydrodynamic radius observed by SEC, correlated to the conservation of the mass distribution by MALDI-ToF and by the very low content of residual linear precursor estimated by NMR. Different aggregation behaviors between linear and cyclic and between short and long systems have been pointed out by DSC and UV–vis absorption spectroscopy. We estimate that long cyclic structures present similar aggregation behavior than long linear ones mainly due to the folding of those chains.