The synthesis and characterization of some new unsaturated polymers

The thesis describes investigations into three novel synthetic routes for the preparation of totally conjugated polymers. The first route involved the attempted photoreductive step-growth polymerization of aromatic diketones with aromatic diols as the first step of a route to poly(arylene vinylene)s. These reactions failed to yield sufficiently high molecular weight polypinacols to merit a continuation of the investigation. The second route examined used the ground state reductive coupling of aromatic diketones utilizing the McMurry reaction. This approach was successful and gave good samples of poly(arylene vinylene)s. The third approach was the thermal and photochemically induced isomerisation of metathesis produced polymers of bicyclofulvenes. Work completed on this project suggests that the products were conjugated polymers. The products of these syntheses were characterized and electrical conductivity and doping studies were carried out on the new polyconjugated materials.