Enzymatic oligomerization and polymerization of arylamines: state of the art and perspectives

The literature concerning the oxidative oligomerization and polymerization of various arylamines, e.g., aniline, substituted anilines, aminonaphthalene and its derivatives, catalyzed by oxidoreductases, such as laccases and peroxidases, in aqueous, organic, and mixed aqueous organic monophasic or biphasic media, is reviewed. An overview of template-free as well as template-assisted enzymatic syntheses of oligomers and polymers of arylamines is given. Special attention is paid to mechanistic aspects of these biocatalytic processes. Because of the nontoxicity of oxidoreductases and their high catalytic efficiency, as well as high selectivity of enzymatic oligomerizations/polymerizations under mild conditions-using mainly water as a solvent and often resulting in minimal byproduct formation-enzymatic oligomerizations and polymerizations of arylamines are environmentally friendly and significantly contribute to a "green'' chemistry of conducting and redox-active oligomers and polymers. Current and potential future applications of enzymatic polymerization processes and enzymatically synthesized oligo/polyarylamines are discussed

Photophysical Study of Polymer-Based Solar Cells with an Organo-Boron Molecule in the Active Layer

Our group previously reported the synthesis of four polythiophene derivatives (P1–P4) used for solar cells. The cells were prepared under room conditions by spin coating, leading to low efficiencies. However, after the addition of 6-nitro-3-(E)-3-(4-dimethylaminophenyl)allylidene)-2,3-dihydrobenzo[d]-[1,3,2] oxazaborole (M1) to their active layers, the efficiencies of the cells showed approximately a two-fold improvement. In this paper, we study this enhancement mechanism by performing ultrafast transient absorption (TA) experiments on the active layer of the different cells. Our samples consisted of thin films of a mixture of PC61BM with the polythiophenes derivatives P1–P4. We prepared two versions of each sample, one including the molecule M1 and another without it. The TA data suggests that the efficiency improvement after addition of M1 is due not only to an extended absorption spectrum towards the infrared region causing a larger population of excitons but also to the possible creation of additional channels for transport of excitons and/or electrons to the PC61BM interface