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    Defect-free Naphthalene Diimide Bithiophene Copolymers with Controlled Molar Mass and High Performance via Direct Arylation Polycondensation
    (Washington, DC : ACS Publications, 2015) Matsidik, Rukiya; Komber, Hartmut; Luzio, Alessandro; Caironi, Mario; Sommer, Michael
    A highly efficient, simple, and environmentally friendly protocol for the synthesis of an alternating naphthalene diimide bithiophene copolymer (PNDIT2) via direct arylation polycondensation (DAP) is presented. High molecular weight (MW) PNDIT2 can be obtained in quantitative yield using aromatic solvents. Most critical is the suppression of two major termination reactions of NDIBr end groups: nucleophilic substitution and solvent end-capping by aromatic solvents via C–H activation. In situ solvent end-capping can be used to control MW by varying monomer concentration, whereby end-capping is efficient and MW is low for low concentration and vice versa. Reducing C–H reactivity of the solvent at optimized conditions further increases MW. Chain perfection of PNDIT2 is demonstrated in detail by NMR spectroscopy, which reveals PNDIT2 chains to be fully linear and alternating. This is further confirmed by investigating the optical and thermal properties as a function of MW, which saturate at Mn ≈ 20 kDa, in agreement with controls made by Stille coupling. Field-effect transistor (FET) electron mobilities μsat up to 3 cm2/(V·s) are measured using off-center spin-coating, with FET devices made from DAP PNDIT2 exhibiting better reproducibility compared to Stille controls.
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    Monitoring conical intersections in the ring opening of furan by attosecond stimulated X-ray Raman spectroscopy
    (Melville, NY : AIP Publishing LLC, 2015) Hua, Weijie; Oesterling, Sven; Biggs, Jason D.; Zhang, Yu; Ando, Hideo; de Vivie-Riedle, Regina; Fingerhut, Benjamin P.; Mukamel, Shaul
    Attosecond X-ray pulses are short enough to capture snapshots of molecules undergoing nonadiabatic electron and nuclear dynamics at conical intersections (CoIns). We show that a stimulated Raman probe induced by a combination of an attosecond and a femtosecond pulse has a unique temporal and spectral resolution for probing the nonadiabatic dynamics and detecting the ultrafast (∼4.5 fs) passage through a CoIn. This is demonstrated by a multiconfigurational self-consistent-field study of the dynamics and spectroscopy of the furan ring-opening reaction. Trajectories generated by surface hopping simulations were used to predict Attosecond Stimulated X-ray Raman Spectroscopy signals at reactant and product structures as well as representative snapshots along the conical intersection seam. The signals are highly sensitive to the changes in nonadiabatically coupled electronic structure and geometry.