Layer-by-Layer Synthesis of Metal-Containing Conducting Polymers: Caged Metal Centers for Interlayer Charge Transport

Metal-templated [2 + 3]-type cocondensation of a pi-extended boronic acid and nioxime furnished a series of cage molecules, which were electropolymerized to prepare metal-containing conducting polymers (MCPs). Despite sharing essentially isostructural organic scaffolds, these materials display metal-dependent electrochemical properties as evidenced by different redox windows observed for M = Co, Fe, Ru. Consecutive electropolymerization using two different monomers furnished bilayer MCPs having different metals in each layer. In addition to functioning as heavy atom markers in cross-sectional analysis by FIB and EDX, redox-active metal centers participate in voltage-dependent interlayer electron transport to give rise to cyclic voltammograms that are distinctively different from those of each layer alone or random copolymers. A simple electrochemical technique can thus be used as a straightforward diagnostic tool to investigate the structural ordering of electrically conductive layered materials.