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Enzyme-mimetic synthesis of PEDOT from self-folded iron-containing single-chain nanoparticles

2018; Elsevier BV; Volume: 109; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.eurpolymj.2018.09.012

1873-1945

Julen De‐La‐Cuesta, Isabel Asenjo‐Sanz, Alejandro Latorre‐Sánchez, Edurne González, Daniel E. Martínez‐Tong, José A. Pomposo,

Polyoxometalates: Synthesis and Applications

Intrinsically conducting polymers (ICPs) such as poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) have attracted significant interest for the development of flexible light-emitting diodes, electrochromic devices and solar cells, as well as for a variety of biosensing and regenerative medicine applications. Herein, we disclose the use of water-soluble self-folded metal-containing single-chain nanoparticles (SCNPs) as robust enzyme-mimic nanoreactors for the synthesis of ICPs via step-growth polymerization. As a proof of concept, we report the first enzyme-mimetic synthesis of PEDOT at room temperature (r.t.) via oxidative polymerization using self-folded iron-containing SCNPs as efficient artificial pseudo-enzymes. Remarkably, this work paves the way to the synthesis of other types of ICPs (e.g., polyaniline, polypyrrole) using water-soluble metal-containing SCNPs as robust enzyme-mimic nanoreactors operating at r.t., and expands the use of SCNPs as bioinspired catalysts from chain-growth polymerization (i.e., ring-opening polymerization and living radical polymerization) to step-growth polymerization (i.e., polycondensation via oxidative polymerization).