Homochiral Helical Poly(thiophene)s Accessed via Living Catalyst-Transfer Polymerization.

Synthetic helical polymers form compact, ordered, and inherently chiral structures, enabling their uses in biomimetic applications as well as catalysis. A challenge in using synthetic helical polymers, however, is their tendency to be sensitive to pH and the presence of nucleophiles, Lewis-acids, or metal ions. We report a strategy to overcome these shortcomings by adapting catalyst-transfer polymerization, a living chain-growth polymerization typically used to access linear conjugated polymers, for the synthesis of helical poly(thiophene)s.