Combination of electrochemistry and the concurrent reduction and substitution chemistry to provide a facile and versatile tool for preparing functional polyanilines

Polyaniline as the first commercially available conducting polymer has recently received great attention from both academic and industrial communities. Although there have been quite a few reports on substituted polyanilines, none of them are concerning about the amino- and alkylthio-substituted polyanilines. Unlike other substituted polyanilines, the attempts in synthesizing poly(alkylthioaniline) directly from the alkylthioaniline monomer via chemical and electrochemical oxidative-coupling chemistry were all fail. On the other hand,we have recently discovered that the amino and alkylthio functional groups can be easily introduced to the backbone of emeraldine polyaniline via the concurrent reduction and substitution chemistry. Further combination of electrochemistry and the concurrent reduction and substitution chemistry can provide us a facile and versatile tool for preparing functional polyanilines. Different functional groups can be introduced sequentially to the same polymer backbone. The concentrations of each substituents can be easily controlled. This new process provides us a useful utility for tailoring the molecular and the electronic structures of polyanilines to render them with appropriate and possibly new material properties suitable for many different potential applications.