Porphyrin-containing conjugated polymers with fluorene or carbazole as spacer groups were prepared by Sonogashira cross-coupling reactions. The polymers were of high molecular weight and the flexible alkyl chains on fluorene or carbazole units made the conjugated polymers soluble in common organic solvents, such as THF and methylene chloride. The polymers could form high quality durable films from solution casting. Their optical and photocurrent responsive properties were investigated. It was found that the photocurrent response was directly proportional to the content of porphyrin. The incorporation of carbazole units into the polymer chains also gave positive contribution to the photocurrent generation in some extent.In recent years conjugated polymers have attracted considerable attention because of their potential applications in the fields of light emitting diodes, photovoltaic devices, and sensors [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] . In the fabrication of semiconductor photovoltaic devices, conjugated polymers have many advantages, such as low cost, suitable for solution process and large area application, over inorganic semiconductors. The efficiency of photovoltaic cells continues to rise with the development of new materials and the improvement of the device structures. The development of highly efficient new conjugated polymers for photovoltaic applications remains a challenge in this area.It is our long-term goal to synthesize porphyrin-containing macromolecular architectures and to exploit their optoelectronic properties. The incorporation of porphyrins into the main backbone of the conjugated polymers is of special interest, because porphyrins are well known as the natural photosynthetic reaction center in green plants. Much effort has been devoted to the design and synthesis of porphyrin-containing macromolecules, including dendrimers [8 -11] , linear oligomers [12][13][14][15][16][17] , and polymers [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] . In our previous papers, we have synthesized a set of fluorene-based porphyrin monomers, star-shaped oligomers, and hyperbranched polymers [32,33] . The alkyl chains on fluorene units could increase the solubility of the porphyrin rings without interrupting the conjugated connections. Here, we report the synthesis of a set of porphyrin-containing conjugated polymers, which are suitable for the fabrication of heterojunction solar cells. In order to increase the charge transport ability, we also copolymerize A 2 B 2 porphyrin monomers with carbazole monomers. In the initial photocurrent generation studies, we found that the contents of porphyrin and carbazole units in the polymer main chains played very important roles.
Experimental
MaterialsAll reagents were obtained from commercial suppliers and used without further purification unless otherwise indicated. Tetrahydrofuran (THF) was distilled from Na-benzophenone under nitrogen. Triethylamine (TEA), diisopropylamine and pyrrole were distilled over CaH 2 . N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) was dried over molecular s...