Synthesis of new electroactive polymers by ion-exchange replacement of Mg(II) by 2H+ or Zn(II) cations inside Mg(II) polyporphine film, with their subsequent electrochemical transformation to condensed-structure materials

It has been demonstrated that the treatment of the magnesium polyporphine of type I, pMgP-I, by trifluoroacetic acid in acetonitrile may be used to replace initial central Mg(II) cations inside the monomeric macrocycle units by protons, to get a new electroactive polymer, “free-base polyporphine of type I”, pH2P-I. In its turn, these inserted protons may be replaced by Zn(II) cations via the film treatment with zinc acetate in organic solvent, to get another new electroactive polymer, “zinc polyporphine of type I”, pZnP-I. These changes of central ions inside monomer units manifest themselves by characteristic modifications of their electroactive properties as well as of UV–visible and IR spectra. Similar to the magnesium polyporphine of type I, pMgP-I, studied in our previous paper (Electrochim. Acta, 2010, 55, 6703) both new polymers are subject to an irreversible electrooxidative transformation into the corresponding polyporphines of type II, pH2P-II and pZnP-II. All these polyporphines of type II demonstrate a very broad range of their redox activity, without any potential interval of non-electroactivity. It means that they represent electroactive polymers with a zero-width band gap in the neutral state of the polymer and the Fermi level is located into a broad electronic band for a wide range of the positive and negative oxidation states. Expected molecular structures of all these polymers are discussed.