Synthesis and Characterization of Bifunctional Polymers Carrying Tris(bipyridyl)ruthenium(II) and Triphenylamine Units

The synthesis, characterization, and properties of a highly soluble bifunctional polymer are described in which a tris(bipyridyl)Ru(II) unit acts as dye and triphenylamine units act as charge transport moieties. First a macroligand, a bipyridine carrying two poly(4-bromostyrene) chains, was synthesized by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) of 4-bromostyrene in bulk using CuCl/PMDETA as the catalytic system and bis(chloromethyl) bipyridine as the initiator. The target polymer was then obtained via a polymer amination reaction in which the bromophenyl group was converted into a triphenylamine followed by metallation of the bipyridine unit of the macroligand with Ru(II) bis(bipyridine). The reaction conditions of ATRP and polymer amination reaction were optimized, and the degree of conversion for both steps was determined by gas chromatography (GC) analysis of rest monomer content and elemental analysis of unreacted bromine, respectively. The control in molecular weight was achieved maintaining a narrow distribution in the desired low molecular weight range of bulk polymerization of 4-bromostyrene. The polymer amination reaction using the Pd(OAc)2 and P(t-Bu)3 system was found to be very efficient, and the reaction was complete within 2 h. The metallation reaction could be followed by UV/vis spectroscopy. MALDI-TOF MS of the three polymers was carried out to obtain absolute molecular weights and their distribution. A comparison of these molecular weights gave additional information about the degree of polymer amination and metallation reaction. The thermal properties of the different polymers suggest that the thermal stability as well as the glass transition temperature increases from the starting macroligand which carries poly(4-bromostyrene) chains to the intermediate polymer having poly(vinyltriphenylamine) chains and finally to the bifunctional Ru(II) polymer complex.