Recent developments in phosphole-containing oligo- and polythiophene materials

The introduction of phosphorus-containing moieties into pi-conjugated thiophene materials has been found to provide materials with strongly optimized and highly tunable opto-electronic features compared to their native thiophene counterparts. 2,5-Diaryl- and 2,5-bis(heteroaryl)phospholes as well as fused tricyclic dithieno[3,2-b:2',3'-d]phospholes represent two very valuable building blocks for organic electronics as their intriguing features can be altered systematically by several, in part unique, methodologies. The potential scope of these modifications has been determined by comprehensive investigations of their structure-property relationships via suitable molecular model compounds. On several occasions, these observations could successfully be transposed to corresponding polymers that are often difficult to characterize independently. The same is true for the first organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) based on a phosphole scaffold, whose properties could also be predicted successfully. (C) Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, 69451 Weinheim, Germany, 2007)