Dispersions of conjugated polymers from catalytic polymerization in aqueous systems

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Stefan Mecking
• Subject Area: Preparatory and Physical Chemistry of Polymers
• Term: from 2007 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 45626153

• Final Report Year: 2014

Final Report Abstract

In the past few years, luminescent nanoparticles of conjugated polymers have evolved as bright and stable probes. A particular attention is on their use for biological imaging. In anticipation of these developments, the research subject to this grant explored novel routes to such particles. Prominently, despite their challenging step-growth character direct polymerizations in aqueous emulsions yielded nanoparticles of high-molecular weight conjugated polymers with various chain microstructures. Via appropriate miniemulsion polymerization protocols desirably small particles down to ca. 20 nm size are accessible. As an alternative approach to well-defined nanoparticles, a living ‘step-growth’ polymerization protocol by virtue of novel functional organometallic initiators yielded polyfluorenes functionalized precisely at both chain ends. These provide access to surfactant-free, also advantageously small nanoparticles. Via covalently incorporated dyes, the emission color of these bright nanoparticles can be tuned as far as the near infrared regime. The suitability for live cell imaging and facile detection of these nanoparticles by standard confocal microscopy was demonstrated for different cell lines.

Publications

• Nanoparticles from Step-Growth Coordination Polymerization. Macromolecules 2007, 40, 7733 - 7735
  J. Pecher, S. Mecking
  
• Fluorescent Conjugated Polymer Nanoparticles by Polymerization in Miniemulsion. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2009, 131, 14267 - 14273
  M. C. Baier, J. Huber, S. Mecking
  
• Aqueous Poly(aryl acetylene) Dispersions. Macromolecules 2010, 43, 8718 - 8723
  J. Huber, S. Mecking
  
• Nanoparticles of Conjugated Polymers (invited contribution, review article). Chem. Rev. 2010, 110, 6260 - 6279
  J. Pecher, S. Mecking
  
• Tailor-Made Conjugated Polymer Nanoparticles for Multicolor and Multiphoton Cell Imaging. Biomacromolecules 2010, 11, 2776 - 2780
  J. Pecher, J. Huber, M. Winterhalder, A. Zumbusch, S. Mecking
  
• Fluorescent Conjugated Block Copolymer Nanoparticles by Controlled Mixing. Chem. Commun. 2012, 48, 2104 - 2106
  Schütze, Friederike; Stempfle, Beate; Jüngst, Christian; Wöll, Dominik; Zumbusch, Andreas & Mecking, Stefan
  
• Nanoparticles of Low Optical Band Gap Conjugated Polymers. Macromolecules 2012, 45, 7799 - 7805
  Huber, Johannes; Jung, Christoph & Mecking, Stefan
  
• Enhanced Brightness Emission-Tuned Nanoparticles from Heterodifunctional Polyfluorene Building Blocks. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 1148 - 1154
  Fischer, Christoph S.; Baier, Moritz C. & Mecking, Stefan
  
• Hybrid Nanoparticles by Step-Growth Sonogashira Coupling in Disperse Systems. Langmuir 2014, 30, 9905 - 9910
  Jung, Christoph; Krumova, Marina & Mecking, Stefan