Design and Synthesis of Novel Compounds Based on Donor-Acceptor Systems and the Applications of Their Conducting Polymers

Conducting polymers continues to facinate many scientists and to become the subject of many researchs in technological and academic areas. The reason for the popularity of the conducting polymers is that they trigger the development of advanced technological materials. Bearing in mind that, desired properties (processability, stability, conductivity, optical properties and so on) of these materials depend on the design and the synthesis of starting monomers. The conducting polymers obtained from the marvellous monomers can be amenable to practical use: (bio)sensors, artificial muscles, displays, electrochromic, memory and photovoltaic devices, supercapacitors, solar cells, light emitting diodes, etc. In this study, the design, synthesis and chemical and/or electrochemical polymerization of monomers (1-6) which are necessary for the generation of processable, low band gap, environmetally stable, reversible electronic and optical properties during n- and p-type dopings, fast switching of the electronic states and different hues of various colors and novel conducting polymers based on donor-acceptor-donor system. Selenium and/or oxygen atoms will be used instead of sulfur atom in benzothiodiazole unit known as acceptor unit in literature. When compared to sulfur, selenium is less electronegative and has larger size, which will obviously affect the electronic and optical properties of obtained conducting polymers. The polymers can be used as RGB (red, green, blue) displays due to green color in its neutral state and transparency in its oxidized state, as supercapacitors due to large and fast doping/dedoping capability, as solar cells due to absorption bands in the region of UV-vis, as photovoltaic devices and radar system due to the high absorption/transmittance values and the emission bands beyond NIR region, as antistatic coatings due to high transparency in the oxidized state, and as n-/p-type transistors due to their reversible and stable n- and p-type dopings. Also, some pre-works on the monomers studied in this project showed that one of the conducting polymers has green color and the modification on the monomer structure of this polymer can open a new door for the discovery of cyan color in the CMY (cyan, magenta, yellow) color system. In this project, initially the monomers (1-6) mentioned above, which is the basic unit for the polymers to be useful in the desired applications, wil be designed, synthesized and characterized. After the characterization of the monomers (by NMR, elemental analysis, FTIR, mass, UV-vis, X-Ray and voltammetric techniques), they will be polymerized into suitable medium via chemical and/or electrochemical polymerization methods. Then, the electronic and optical properties of the obtained conducting polymers will be characterized to be amenable for use in RGB displays, solar cells, supercapacitors, photovoltaic devices, transistors and so on).