Martin Heeney (KAUST/Imperial): "Post-polymerisation approaches to functional conjugated polymers"

Martin Heeney is a Professor of Chemical Science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and Professor of Organic Materials at Imperial College. He is a graduate of the University of East Anglia and received his PhD from the same institution in 1999 under the supervision of Prof. Michael Cook. Following a postdoctoral position with a start-up company in the area of photodynamic therapy, he joined Merck Chemicals in 2000, eventually becoming project leader for the organic electronics team. He made the move to academia in 2007, joining the Materials Department at Queen Mary University of London as a senior lecturer. In 2009 he moved across London to join the Chemistry Department at Imperial College London. His research interests include the design, synthesis and characterisation of conjugated materials for a variety of applications. He has published over 400 research papers, 5 book chapters and over 100 patents. His work has been cited over 34,000 times and he has an h-index of 97. He has been named five times by Thomson Reuters as a HighlyCited researcher in the field of Materials Science, is a recipient of the RSC Corday-Morgan (2013) medal, the RSC Peter Day (2020) award and the Macro group UK medal (2020).

Abstract: Precisely controlling the band gap, molecular packing, and absolute energy levels of conjugated polymers and oligomers is an essential aspect for their diverse applications. While conventional methods often involve co-polymerization of various co-monomers to achieve this, elucidating structure-property relationships by varying co-monomer ratios proves challenging due to the intertwined effects of changes in backbone chemistry, polydispersity, molecular weight, and defects. Post-polymerisation methods can overcome these difficulties by performing reactions on a single batch of preformed polymer, offering an intriguing approach to tailor material properties and incorporate sensitive functionality.

Here I detail our recent work in developing quantitative reactions for backbone modification. We explore the creation of reactive end groups and co-monomers that can be readily modified with high yields, and demonstrate how such approaches can be used to tailor materials for application in a range of applications, such as organic electrochemical transistors and device interlayers. The incorporation of sensitive functionalities, allowing for crosslinking and photopatterning, will also be addressed.