Facile Multicomponent Polymerizations toward Unconventional Luminescent Polymers with Readily Openable Small Heterocycles

• DOI: 10.1021/jacs.8b01991
• Publication Date: 2018-04-09T20:09:48Z
• Authors: Ting Han; Haiqin Deng; Zijie Qiu; Zheng Zhao; Haoke Zhang; Hang Zou; Nelson L. C. Leung; Guogang Shan; Mark R. J. Elsegood; Jacky W. Y. Lam; Ben Zhong Tang
• Keywords: Azetidine; Heteroatom

Heterocyclic polymers have gained enormous attention for their unique functionalities and wide applications. In contrast with the well-studied polymer systems five- or six-membered heterocycles, functional readily openable small-ring heterocycles rarely been explored due to large synthetic difficulty. Herein, a facile one-pot multicomponent polymerization such is developed. A series of multisubstituted heteroatom-rich azetidine frameworks are efficiently generated at room temperature in high atom economy from handy monomers. The four-membered rings skeletons can be easily transformed into amide amidine moieties via fast efficient acid-mediated ring-opening reaction, producing brand-new polymeric materials distinctive properties. All as-prepared azetidine-containing exhibit intrinsic visible luminescence solid state under long-wavelength UV irradiation even without conventionally conjugated structures. Such unconventional attributed clusteroluminogens formed by through-space electronic interactions heteroatoms phenyl rings. obtained show excellent optical transparency, tunable refractive indices, low dispersions good photopatternability, which make them promising various advanced optoelectronic devices. ring-opened also function as lysosome-specific fluorescent probe biological imaging.