Poly(cyclosilane) Connectivity Tunes Optical Absorbance

Abstract

We report herein the influence of skeletal connectivity on the conformation-dependent optical properties of cyclosilane homo- and copolymers. 1,3-Linked cyclosilanes were bathochromically shifted by 20 nm in solution relative to 1,4-linked cyclosilanes, an effect reproduced by quantum chemical calculations on oligomeric model systems. Polysilane optical properties are conformation-dependent, and 1,3-linked cyclosilanes were hypothesized to adopt a favorable conformation unavailable to 1,4-linked cyclosilanes constrained to an endocyclic gauche conformation. Copolymerization of the isomeric cyclosilanes 1,3Si 6 and 1,4Si 6 afforded linear statistical copolymers, as characterized by 1 H and 29 Si NMR spectroscopies. The distinct connectivity of each comonomer was found to give rise to tunable absorption spectra, where the position of the absorption band systematically increased with the increased corporation of 1,3Si 6 . Computational studies pointed to conformation-dependent changes in orbital symmetry in shifting the most intense transition from the low-energy highest occupied molecular orbital (HOMO) → lowest unoccupied molecular orbital (LUMO) transition to a higher-energy HOMO → LUMO + n transition. Here, the results of these studies demonstrate for the first time the role of silicon skeletal connectivity in controlling conformation and optoelectronic properties and provide new insight into the structure-based design of solution-processable silicon-based polymeric materials.