Synthesis and characterization of novel fluorene-thiophene-based conjugated copolymers

A novel series of soluble alternating conjugated copolymers comprised of 9, 9-dihexylfluorene and substituted bithiophene or thiophene moieties have be en synthesized by palladium-catalyzed Suzuki coupling reaction. The polymer structures were characterized and confirmed by NMR, FT-IR, and elemental a nalysis. The defined structures of the polymers provide us the possibility to study the structure-property relationships of the polymers based on the hybrid backbones, especially by controlling the substitution on thiophene r ings and the coupling configurations between two adjacent thiophene rings. All of the four polymers have demonstrated efficient blue-to-green light em ission, good solubility in common organic solvents, good thermal stability, relatively high glass transition temperatures and good electrochemical pro per-ties. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science BY. All rights reserved.