bstract: For over 10 year my students and I have been contributing to the field of pi-conjugated polymers. Much of our work has focused on the implementation of ‘living’ methods to produce new classes of very well defined pi-conjugated polymers. Many of these polymers incorporate ‘heavy’ atoms such as selenium and tellurium. These novel macromolecules have been utilized as the active components in a range of devices including thin-film transistors, solar cells, and thermoelectric generators. The precise nature of the synthesis allows us and our collaborators to make reproducible observations about structure-property relationships. We have also used these synthetic methods to prepare a range of other conjugated polymer architectures, including block copolymers. These polymers are fundamentally important for testing the limits of phase-separation and solution self-assembly, as well for studying how morphology is linked to properties such as charge-transport. More recently, we have expanded our interest to include even more complex polymer architectures that are utilized to understand larger scale self-assembly in pi-delocalized systems. Other work in our group has focused on method development. Recently we have focused on methods that allow one to obtain perfectly monodisperse polymers, been able to isolate pure ‘living’ pi-conjugated polymer chains, and been able to polymerize highly unreactive species such as very electron deficient moieties. Some of these studies are guided by computational methods to understand each step of the polymerization mechanism in detail. The synthesis, (self) assembly, and properties of these macromolecules will be discussed.
Website: sites.chem.utoronto.ca/seferos/
Twitter: @SeferosGroup