Enabling Conducting Polymer Applications: Methods for Achieving High Molecular Weight in Chemical Oxidative Polymerization in Alkyl- and Ether-Substituted Thiophenes.

Polythiophenes (PTs) constitute a diverse array of promising materials for conducting polymer applications. However, many of the synthetic methods to produce PTs have been optimized only for the prototypical alkyl-substituted example poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT). Improvement of these methods beyond P3HT is key to enabling the widespread application of PTs.