Using molecular straps to engineer conjugated porous polymer growth, chemical doping, and conductivity

Controlling network growth and architecture of 3D-conjugated porous polymers (CPPs) is challenging and therefore has limited the ability to systematically tune the network architecture and study its impact on doping efficiency and conductivity. We have proposed that pi-face masking straps mask the pi-face of the polymer backbone and therefore help to control pi-pi interchain interactions in higher dimensional pi-conjugated materials unlike the conventional linear alkyl pendant solubilizing chains that are incapable of masking the pi-face. Herein, we used cycloaraliphane-based pi-face masking strapped monomers and show that the strapped repeat units, unlike the conventional monomers, help to overcome the strong interchain pi-pi interactions, extend network residence time, tune network growth, and increase chemical doping and conductivity in 3D-conjugated porous polymers. The straps doubled the network crosslinking density, which resulted in 18 times higher chemical doping efficiency compared to the control non-strapped-CPP. The straps also provided synthetic tunability and generated CPPs of varying network size, crosslinking density, dispersibility limit, and chemical doping efficiency by changing the knot to strut ratio. For the first time, we have shown that the processability issue of CPPs can be overcome by blending them with insulating commodity polymers. The blending of CPPs with poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA) has enabled them to be processed into thin films for conductivity measurements. The conductivity of strapped-CPPs is three orders of magnitude higher than that of the poly(phenyleneethynylene) porous network.