A novel precursor route to poly(p-phenylene-1,3-butadiene-1,4-ylene)

Bifunctional esters containing terminal bromo aryl and vinyl groups were polymerized with Pd(0) catalyst to soluble precursor polymers, which could be easily converted to poly(p-phenylene-1,3-butadiene-1,4-ylene). The transformation into the conjugated polymer was investigated with DSC, TGA, FT-IR, UV/vis, PL and DI-MS. Resulting polymer shows a bathochromic shift of absorbance and photoluminescence spectra in comparison to PPP and PPV. The experimentally determined value for the bandgap energy Eg is 2.25 eV, which was predicted due to theoretical calculations (Eg = 2.06 eV).