Os polímeros condutores intrínsecos são materiais isolantes ou semicondutores que, quando submetidos a um processo de dopagem, passam a apresentar condutividade próxima à metálica. Dentre os polímeros condutores sintetizados mais estudados está a poli(anilina), (PANI), que apesar de ter sido sintetizada pela primeira vez há aproximadamente 150 anos, continua sendo objeto de estudo de muitos grupos de pesquisa por todo o mundo até hoje. Apesar das características atrativas da PANI (facilidade de preparação e dopagem, estabilidade química e baixo custo), ela é categorizada como um material insolúvel e infusível em condições normais, o que dificulta sua processabilidade e aplicabilidade. Em vista dessas características indesejáveis, muitos derivados da PANI, tais como PANIs substituídas, copolímeros e blendas, são preparados em busca de novos materiais mais solúveis e processáveis. A obtenção do PPSA, um copolímero alternado da PANI e do PPS, mostrou-se atraente devido à possibilidade desse material poder apresentar as propriedades desejáveis de ambos os homopolímeros, juntamente com uma maior solubilidade. Nesta tese, apresentar-se-á a preparação desse polímero bem como sua respectiva caracterização espectroscópica e térmica e a determinação da massa molecular pela técnica de espalhamento de luz. Um estudo do comportamento eletroquímico por voltametria cíclica combinada com técnicas \"in situ\": espectroscopia Raman Ressonante, UV-Visível e por microbalança eletroquímica a cristal de quartzo também será mostrado. / The intrinsic conducting polymers are insulating or semi-conducting materials that show conductivities similar to metals when submitted to a doping process. Polyaniline (PANI), synthesized for the first time 150 years ago, is still the subject of research of many groups in the world, being one of the most studied conductive polymers. Besides its attractive properties (easy synthesise and doping, chemical stability and low cost), PANI is an insoluble and infusible material in normal conditions, what makes its processability and applicability very difficult. In order to overcome these difficulties, many PANI derivatives, such as substituted PANIs, copolymers and blends have been prepared, searching for more soluble materials and processible. PPSA, an alternate copolymer of PANI and PPS, is an attractive alternative because this material can show interesting properties of both homopolymers, together with a higher solubility. In this thesis it will be shown the preparation of this copolymer, as well as its spectroscopic and thermal characterization, and the determination of its molar mass by light scattering. The electrochemical behavior, studied by cyclic voltammetry combined with \"in situ\" techniques such as Raman resonant spectroscopy, UV-VIS and electrochemical quartz crystal microbalance, will also be shown.

Visant des applications en électronique moléculaire, de nouveaux édifices moléculaires combinant quatre dithiényléthènes (DTEs) et une porphyrine ont été synthétisés par de nouvelles voies de synthèse. Les études en solution par photochimie ou spectroélectrochimie des édifices tetraDTEs-porphyrine métallée ou base livre ont montré l’efficacité (62-88 pourcent) des photochromes en tant qu’interrupteurs et la possibilité de lire l’état des DTEs par la fluorescence de la porphyrine. Pour mieux comprendre les interactions électroniques DTEs- porphyrines, des édifices plus simples, bis(porphyrine)DTE, déjà partiellement étudiés dans la littérature, ont été explorés. L’ensemble de ces études à mis en évidence l’impact des métaux sur la capacité photochromique des édifices dithiényléthène – porphyrine. / The main purpose of this thesis was the synthesis of new molecular structures, combining dithienylethenes and porphyrins, for applications in molecular electronics and spintronic. Metallated and free base porphyrins bearing four DTEs were characterizes and studied in solution by photochemistry and spectroelectrochemistry. The efficiency of switching of our systems reach 88 percent and strong quenching porphyrin’s fluorescence was reported. New synthetic pathways were investigated to prepare a broader scope of tetraDTEs-porphyrin derivatives. Moreover, to better understand the electronic communications between DTEs and porphyrins, a simpler bis(porphyrin)DTE molecular structure was synthetized and studied. These studies demonstrated showed the important role of the metal on photochromic behavior of dithienylethene – porphyrin architectures.

The ability to tune the electronic band gap of semiconductor nanoparticles or “quantum dots” by controlling their size simply by variation of the synthetic conditions has opened many possibilities for applications across a wide range of fields. Many of these applications, such as solar cells, catalysis, sensing and light emitting diodes involve charge transfer processes between the nanoparticles and an adjacent phase. In order to make that charge transfer as efficient as possible, knowledge pertaining to the absolute energy positions of the electronic levels of such nanoparticulate materials is of primary relevance. The determination of these values and the important parameters that influence them was therefore the central issue of the present work. An electrochemical approach was chosen so that the data obtained could be referred to an absolute energy scale.The ability to tune the electronic band gap of semiconductor nanoparticles or “quantum dots” by controlling their size simply by variation of the synthetic conditions has opened many possibilities for applications across a wide range of fields. Many of these applications, such as solar cells, catalysis, sensing and light emitting diodes involve charge transfer processes between the nanoparticles and an adjacent phase. In order to make that charge transfer as efficient as possible, knowledge pertaining to the absolute energy positions of the electronic levels of such nanoparticulate materials is of primary relevance. The determination of these values and the important parameters that influence them was therefore the central issue of the present work. An electrochemical approach was chosen so that the data obtained could be referred to an absolute energy scale. To achieve reliable measurements a new strategy was developed so that dense and homogeneous monolayers of semiconductor particles could be deposited onto transparent electrodes. The films were obtained by exchanging the original bulky ligand shell of the nanocrystals with a reactive alkoxysilane species and subsequent immersion of the substrate into a solution of the modified nanocrystals. SEM and electrochemical investigations have shown a much higher coverage efficiency in comparison with other methods presently established in the literature, which are based on the approach of prefunctionalizing of the substrates prior to coating. Fractional coverages of 80 % were obtained within 24 h while avoiding the time consuming and complicated step of functionalizing the substrates before deposition. Films of CdSe and CdS nanoparticles deposited on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) electrodes were characterized by means of potential modulated absorption spectro-scopy (EMAS). Employing this special spectroelectrochemical technique, bleach signatures in the absorption spectra of the quantum dots induced by electron injection into their respective conduction band states were investigated. The features observed in the spectra and the evaluation of the potential dependence of the signal intensity revealed that only the lowest conduction band state, namely the 1Se state, is populated. The occupancy follows a quasi Fermi-Dirac distribution whose distributional width, in addition to the temperature, also depends on the size distribution of the particle ensemble investigated. On that basis a model was developed to extract the electrochemical potentials of the respective populated lowest conduction band states. For CdSe quantum dots the four energetically lowest excitonic transitions were found to become bleached as the 1Se state is populated, indicating that these transitions promote electrons from different states in the valence band to the same conduction band state. These findings are in excellent agreement with results obtained from ultra fast optical pump probe experiments, which are methods that usually demand much more experimental efforts than the technique presented in these studies. The determination of the potential of the 1Se state versus a known reference potential allows one to map the top valence band states with respect to an absolute energy scale. This provides the opportunity to compare the energy positions obtained for different samples. Determination of the electrochemical band edge potential clearly features a size dependent shift of the conduction band edge and the valence band edge for both CdSe and CdS quantum dots, which is in excellent agreement with the expected behavior due to the quantum confinement effect. Investigations in different electrolytes have shown that the immediate environment has a major impact on the electrochemical potentials of the energy levels of the nanoparticles. This observation is particularly important from a technological point of view, as in many applications the semiconductor material is in direct contact with an electrolyte as for example in quantum dot sensitized solar cells, electrochemical sensors and catalysis. In contrast to other “purely physical” methods such as photoelectron spectroscopy or scanning tunneling spectroscopy, potential-modulated absorption spectroscopy provides the ability to probe the materials under their most likely “working” conditions where such environmental influences can be directly taken into account. Further, it has been shown that potential modulated absorption spectroscopy can be applied to bulk semiconductor electrodes, as long as they are thin enough to allow adequate amounts of light to pass through. The features observed in the EMAS spectra of these samples clearly differ from those obtained for nanoparticle films, as in such materials a continuum of states is progressively filled rather than a single state. Besides band-filling the potential modulation additionally induces changes in the absorption, which can be attributed to the Franz-Keldysh effect resulting from the modulation of the electric field across the space charge layer. The resolution and sensitivity that one can obtain with this comparatively simple and cost-effective setup is quite remarkable. As has been demonstrated it was possible to achieve clearly resolved bleach spectra of submonolayers of quantum dots attached to FTO with optical densities below 0.001. Recently it has been reported that cyclic voltammetry (CV) can be used to study the size dependent positions of the electronic levels of quantum dots. The intention of the last part of this thesis was to reproduce this work for the nanoparticles investigated within this thesis in order to compare the results with those obtained by EMAS. However, the experiments undertaken here reveal that the anodic and cathodic peaks observed in the cyclic voltammograms cannot automatically be assigned to the absolute band edge positions of the particles as the size dependent peak positions and their potential differences do not show any evidence for a correlation with respect to the quantum size effect. Rather the voltammetric responses reflect the solid state electrochemical characteristics of CdSe. Theoretical considerations concerning the response expected in a CV due to band filling of semiconductor nanoparticles confined to an electrode surface revealed that the expected currents are quite similar to that of a pseudo-capacitance. However, pronounced signals are only obtained if appropriate amounts of deposited nanoparticles are present which are electronically addressable without hampering the charge transfer. Hence a clear assignment of the peaks obtained in a cyclic voltammogram to the electronic band edges without employing a complementary technique to confirm ones findings therefore seems to be at best questionable.

L’objectif de cette thèse de doctorat vise à développer des monocouches organiques auto-assemblées (SAMs) destinées à mieux comprendre la transposition depropriétés macroscopiques observées en solution vers le milieu confiné. Dans le cadre de notre étude, nous avons synthétisé des précurseurs électroactifs (i.e. dérivés du thiophène, du pérylènediimide et du tétrathiafulvalène) comportant des mécanismes électrochimiques (i.e. schéma carré, EDimE) et des propriétés optiques (absorption et/ou émission de fluorescence) spécifiques. L’immobilisation des précurseurs sur substrats d’or à l’aide de fonctions disulfures a permis d’élaborer des SAMs. L’étude des électrodes modifiées par des méthodes électrochimiques (voltammétrie cyclique) et spectroélectrochimiques a permis d’établir des relations de type structure/propriétés et structure/réactivité. / This thesis is devoted to the elaboration of new organic self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) for a better understanding of the transposition of macroscopic properties that are well-known in solution onto metallic surface. In our study we have synthesised electroactive precursors (i.e. thiophene, perylene diimide and tetrathiafulvalene derivatives) with electrochemical mechanisms (i.e. squared scheme, EDimE) and specific optical properties (absorption and/or emission of fluorescence). The immobilization of the precursors on gold substrates was achieved using disulphide moieties to form SAMs. The study of the modified electrodes by electrochemical techniques (cyclic voltammetry) and spectroelectrochemistry helped to establish detailed structure-properties and structure-reactivity relationships, especially on mixed SAMs.

A series of Fischer mono- and biscarbene complexes of the type [MLn{C=(XR)R'}] was synthesized and characterized. The redox behavior of the complexes was studied by different techniques, including cyclic voltammetry, spectroelectrochemistry, ESR and computational methods. Different transition metals (M) and carbene substituents (XR, R') were employed to compare both the effect of the central metal atom as well as the carbene substituent. Thienyl, furyl and ferrocenyl chromium(0) mono- and biscarbene complexes with ethoxy and amino substituents were electrochemically studied in CH2Cl2. Results were mutually consistent with computational data showing that the carbene double bond of all complexes is reduced pseudo reversibly to an anion radical, -Cr-C•. The Cr centers are oxidized in two successive one electron transfer steps to Cr(II) via the Cr(I) intermediate. For all ferrocenyl carbene complexes the Fe(II) is oxidized after the first oxidation of Cr. It was found that with respect to the aryl substituents the donating effect decreases from Fc>Fu>Th. Stabilization from the XR substituent, where XR = NHR, also resulted in lower redox potentials compared to their OEt analogues. The inclusion of ferrocene in the carbene substituent was done, as its redox activity and increased donating effect are well known. Mono- and biscarbene complexes with ethoxy and amino substituents of both chromium and tungsten were electrochemically studied. Again experimental data were supported by computational studies. Similar to the ethoxy chromium complexes, reduction of the W=C fragment to -W-C• was observed. However oxidation of the Fc group occurred first before the electrochemically irreversible oxidation process for W(0) involving a three electron-mediated process as seen in chronocoulometric analyses. The tungsten oxidation was restricted to a W0/II, consistent with computational studies, by the use of the electrolyte [NnBu4][B(C6F5)4]. The short-lived W(II) species were calculated to be stabilized by agostic CH···W interactions, similar to the chromium analogues. To extend linkers between the metal-carbene termini and investigate metal-metal interaction, biferrocenyl and 2,5-thienylbiferrocenyl tungsten(0) mono-and biscarbene complexes were synthesized and studied by spectroelectrochemistry. A metal-metal charge transfer transition between the tungsten carbonyl increment and the biferrocenyl / 2,5-thienylbiferrocenyl unit was confirmed by infrared spectroelectrochemical studies. The electronic interaction in the corresponding cationic species can be described as weakly coupled class II systems according to Robin and Day. The cymantrenyl moiety, Mn(η5-C5H4)(CO)3, provides an interesting alternative to ferrocene as an organometallic molecular tag, however the instability of the radical cation impairs its use. Improved stability of the cation, monitored by electrochemical measurements, was accomplished by substituting a carbonyl with a ferrocenyl Fischer carbene ligand resulting in Mn(I) oxidation occuring at lower potentials than ferrocenyl oxidation. These uncommon Fischer carbene complexes is the first organometallic multi-tags reported. The mono cationic species, [CpMn(CO)2{=C(OEt)Fc}][PF6], could be isolated and characterized with ESR analysis. Finally, transmetallation from the tungsten(0) Fischer carbene complexes yielded examples of rare acyclic alkoxy- and aminocarbene complexes of gold(I). Single x-ray structures for all complexes could be obtained including the novel ferrocenophane dinuclear biscarbene Au(I) complex. All structures display unsupported aurophilic interactions, while the bridging biscarbene shows a semi-supported Au-Au interaction. In the case of the furanyl/thienyl methoxy monocarbene complexes, extended Au-Au interactions result in oligomeric structures. Although this study is of a fundamental nature, it is imperative for the understanding and design of gold compounds with specific applications. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2013. / gm2014 / Chemistry / unrestricted

The ability to tune the electronic band gap of semiconductor nanoparticles or “quantum dots” by controlling their size simply by variation of the synthetic conditions has opened many possibilities for applications across a wide range of fields. Many of these applications, such as solar cells, catalysis, sensing and light emitting diodes involve charge transfer processes between the nanoparticles and an adjacent phase. In order to make that charge transfer as efficient as possible, knowledge pertaining to the absolute energy positions of the electronic levels of such nanoparticulate materials is of primary relevance. The determination of these values and the important parameters that influence them was therefore the central issue of the present work. An electrochemical approach was chosen so that the data obtained could be referred to an absolute energy scale.The ability to tune the electronic band gap of semiconductor nanoparticles or “quantum dots” by controlling their size simply by variation of the synthetic conditions has opened many possibilities for applications across a wide range of fields. Many of these applications, such as solar cells, catalysis, sensing and light emitting diodes involve charge transfer processes between the nanoparticles and an adjacent phase. In order to make that charge transfer as efficient as possible, knowledge pertaining to the absolute energy positions of the electronic levels of such nanoparticulate materials is of primary relevance. The determination of these values and the important parameters that influence them was therefore the central issue of the present work. An electrochemical approach was chosen so that the data obtained could be referred to an absolute energy scale. To achieve reliable measurements a new strategy was developed so that dense and homogeneous monolayers of semiconductor particles could be deposited onto transparent electrodes. The films were obtained by exchanging the original bulky ligand shell of the nanocrystals with a reactive alkoxysilane species and subsequent immersion of the substrate into a solution of the modified nanocrystals. SEM and electrochemical investigations have shown a much higher coverage efficiency in comparison with other methods presently established in the literature, which are based on the approach of prefunctionalizing of the substrates prior to coating. Fractional coverages of 80 % were obtained within 24 h while avoiding the time consuming and complicated step of functionalizing the substrates before deposition. Films of CdSe and CdS nanoparticles deposited on fluorine doped tin oxide (FTO) electrodes were characterized by means of potential modulated absorption spectro-scopy (EMAS). Employing this special spectroelectrochemical technique, bleach signatures in the absorption spectra of the quantum dots induced by electron injection into their respective conduction band states were investigated. The features observed in the spectra and the evaluation of the potential dependence of the signal intensity revealed that only the lowest conduction band state, namely the 1Se state, is populated. The occupancy follows a quasi Fermi-Dirac distribution whose distributional width, in addition to the temperature, also depends on the size distribution of the particle ensemble investigated. On that basis a model was developed to extract the electrochemical potentials of the respective populated lowest conduction band states. For CdSe quantum dots the four energetically lowest excitonic transitions were found to become bleached as the 1Se state is populated, indicating that these transitions promote electrons from different states in the valence band to the same conduction band state. These findings are in excellent agreement with results obtained from ultra fast optical pump probe experiments, which are methods that usually demand much more experimental efforts than the technique presented in these studies. The determination of the potential of the 1Se state versus a known reference potential allows one to map the top valence band states with respect to an absolute energy scale. This provides the opportunity to compare the energy positions obtained for different samples. Determination of the electrochemical band edge potential clearly features a size dependent shift of the conduction band edge and the valence band edge for both CdSe and CdS quantum dots, which is in excellent agreement with the expected behavior due to the quantum confinement effect. Investigations in different electrolytes have shown that the immediate environment has a major impact on the electrochemical potentials of the energy levels of the nanoparticles. This observation is particularly important from a technological point of view, as in many applications the semiconductor material is in direct contact with an electrolyte as for example in quantum dot sensitized solar cells, electrochemical sensors and catalysis. In contrast to other “purely physical” methods such as photoelectron spectroscopy or scanning tunneling spectroscopy, potential-modulated absorption spectroscopy provides the ability to probe the materials under their most likely “working” conditions where such environmental influences can be directly taken into account. Further, it has been shown that potential modulated absorption spectroscopy can be applied to bulk semiconductor electrodes, as long as they are thin enough to allow adequate amounts of light to pass through. The features observed in the EMAS spectra of these samples clearly differ from those obtained for nanoparticle films, as in such materials a continuum of states is progressively filled rather than a single state. Besides band-filling the potential modulation additionally induces changes in the absorption, which can be attributed to the Franz-Keldysh effect resulting from the modulation of the electric field across the space charge layer. The resolution and sensitivity that one can obtain with this comparatively simple and cost-effective setup is quite remarkable. As has been demonstrated it was possible to achieve clearly resolved bleach spectra of submonolayers of quantum dots attached to FTO with optical densities below 0.001. Recently it has been reported that cyclic voltammetry (CV) can be used to study the size dependent positions of the electronic levels of quantum dots. The intention of the last part of this thesis was to reproduce this work for the nanoparticles investigated within this thesis in order to compare the results with those obtained by EMAS. However, the experiments undertaken here reveal that the anodic and cathodic peaks observed in the cyclic voltammograms cannot automatically be assigned to the absolute band edge positions of the particles as the size dependent peak positions and their potential differences do not show any evidence for a correlation with respect to the quantum size effect. Rather the voltammetric responses reflect the solid state electrochemical characteristics of CdSe. Theoretical considerations concerning the response expected in a CV due to band filling of semiconductor nanoparticles confined to an electrode surface revealed that the expected currents are quite similar to that of a pseudo-capacitance. However, pronounced signals are only obtained if appropriate amounts of deposited nanoparticles are present which are electronically addressable without hampering the charge transfer. Hence a clear assignment of the peaks obtained in a cyclic voltammogram to the electronic band edges without employing a complementary technique to confirm ones findings therefore seems to be at best questionable.

<p>The present body of work has focused on the development of the chemistry of iron complexes of macrocyclic ligands, specifically HMC and HMTI. This has proceeded along two distinct, though related, lines. First, metal-alkynyl complexes have been synthesized, and the effects of the macrocyclic ligand on the metal center – and therefore on the metal-alkynyl bond – have been extensively explored. This is first described for a mono- and bis-alkynyl pair in Chapter 2, in which the general structural and electrochemical features of the Fe(HMTI) motif are delineated. In Chapter 3, the detailed characterization of an iron HMC/HMTI family of complexes is described, which is accompanied by spectroelectrochemical (SEC) analyses and extensive DFT and TD-DFT. Finally, as described in Chapter 4, the understanding gained in the aforementioned works is leveraged to control the properties of mixed-valent complexes based on Fe(HMC/HMTI) bis-alkynyl motif, with a motivation to explore fundamental questions for the development of molecular wires.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The second realm of exploration has been concerned with understanding ferrous complexes of HMTI at a deeper level – which species have been previously reported but largely uninvestigated. Collaborative efforts have shown that these FeII(HMTI) species can have unusually long excited state lifetimes under the appropriate conditions, as discussed in Chapter 5. Further (unpublished) characterization of this family of complexes is the focus of Chapter 6, which highlights the relationship between the energy of the charge-transfer absorption band and the nature of the axial ligand.</p> <p><br></p> <p>The novel work outlined above is preceded by introductory material (Chapter 1). This chapter serves to briefly contextualize the body which follows within the landscape of the earlier established (though limited) literature on Fe(HMTI) species. Chapter 1 thus represents an attempt to illustrate the ties throughout what might otherwise (and perhaps still does) appear a disjointed conglomerate of text.</p>

Nanomaterialen beginnen sich aus der akademischen Welt heraus langsam in kommerzielle Produkte zu entwickeln. Dabei helfen ihnen einzigartige optoelektronische Eigenschaften. Damit ein solcher Übergang gelingt, ist es notwendig, die Nanoteilchen durch geeignete Analyseverfahren zu verstehen und Wege zur gezielten Manipulation bestimmter Eigenschaften analytisch zu begleiten. Die vorliegende Arbeit hat sich zum Ziel gemacht eine spektroelektrochemische Methode, die Potential-modulierte Absorptionsspektroskopie (EMAS), weiterzuentwickeln. Mit EMAS können die optoelektronischen Eigenschaften von Halbleiternanomaterialen untersucht werden, wobei die Methode durch ihre besondere Empfindlichkeit im Vergleich zu anderen spektroelektrochemischen Methoden beeindruckt. Im Rahmen der Arbeit wurde das Spektrum von EMAS zunächst von sphärischen Nanopartikeln auf anisotrope Nanoplatelets erweitert, wobei sowohl ein als auch mehrphasige Systeme betrachtet wurden. Anschließend konnte der Messbereich vom sichtbaren Bereich bis ins nahe Infrarot erweitert werden, was auch die Untersuchung von Partikeln möglich macht, die eine potentielle Anwendung in der Konversion solarer Energie haben. Weiterhin wurden neue Werkzeuge entwickelt und EMAS Varianten betrachtet. Zusammenfassend präsentiert sich EMAS als leistungsstarke spektroelektrochemische Analysemethode deren Weiterentwicklung positiv auf die voranschreitende Nanopartikelforschung wirken wird.

Lateral self-exchange of charge across dye-sensitized film is a phenomenon that may play animportant role in effectivizing H2 production from water via solar energy, and shows potential forother interesting applications. The rate of charge movement via lateral self-exchange across afilm is often quantified in terms of apparent diffusivity of charge, Dapp. In this project, it wasinvestigated how Dapp varies with applied potential, as preliminary results had shown resultsinconsistent with current theoretical understanding. To examine this discrepancy, Dapp wascalculated for different applied overpotentials on a ZrO2 film sensitized with the dye D35. It wasconcluded that values of Dapp vary with overpotential close to the dye’s redox potential, aspredicted by theory. Different dyes may yield other results, and further research on the subject isneeded. Interesting and unexplained differences in kinetics for oxidation and re-reduction of thedye were found, which prompts further studies on the matter.

No description available.