Visible-Light Driven Synthesis of Semiconducting Polymers – PhotoSynth

There is a growing interest in conjugated polymers, now found in most organic electronic devices. However, their preparation most of the time relies on precious metal catalysed reactions with poor atom economy and prone to introduce defects. The PhotoSynth project offers to prepare conjugated polymers with an excellent atom economy, condensing a diaminoPDI and an aldehyde together to form a poly-imine further irreversibly photo cyclized by visible light (for example in a continuous flow photo reactor) into a fully conjugated system. This approach limits waste, the use of additive, removes the need for expensive catalyst or ligands and is also versatile as the diaminoPDI building block can be combined with a wide variety of opto/electroactive bis-adehydes to tune the properties of the polymers, which will be later tested in devices. PhotoSynth paves the way toward a sustainable, modular and efficient synthesis of a new generation of organic semiconductors of interest.