An Ultrastable Porous Polyhedral Oligomeric Silsesquioxane/Tetraphenylthiophene Hybrid as a High-Performance Electrode for Supercapacitors.

In this study, we synthesized three hybrid microporous polymers through Heck couplings of octavinylsilsesquioxane (OVS) with 2,5-bis(4-bromophenyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole (OXD-Br2), tetrabromothiophene (Th-Br4), and 2,5-bis(4-bromophenyl)-3,4-diphenylthiophene (TPTh-Br2), obtaining the porous organic-inorganic polymers (POIPs) POSS-OXD, POSS-Th, and POSS-TPTh, respectively. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and solid state 13C and 29Si NMR spectroscopy confirmed their chemical structures. Thermogravimetric analysis revealed that, among these three systems, the POSS-Th POIP possessed the highest thermal stability (T5: 586 °C; T10: 785 °C; char yield: 90 wt%), presumably because of a strongly crosslinked network formed between its OVS and Th moieties. Furthermore, the specific capacity of the POSS-TPTh POIP (354 F g-1) at 0.5 A g-1 was higher than those of the POSS-Th (213 F g-1) and POSS-OXD (119 F g-1) POIPs. We attribute the superior electrochemical properties of the POSS-TPTh POIP to its high surface area and the presence of electron-rich phenyl groups within its structure.

Protein quantitation by complexation of fluorescent tetraphenylthiophene cation to anion-terminated poly(N-isopropylacrylamide): aggregation-enhanced emission and electrostatic interaction.

A fluorescent biological sensor utilizing aggregation-enhanced emission (AEE) property was developed in our laboratory. First, the AEE-active fluorescent tetraphenylthiophene (TP) unit was synthetically connected to poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) by covalent and ionic bonds, resulting in the respective c- and i-TP-PNIPAM for the detection and quantification of the bovine serum albumin (BSA) model protein. When bind to BSA, the ionic i-TP-PNIPAM shows much better fluorescence (FL) sensitivity compared to c-PNIPAM. The fluorescence (FL) intensity of i-TP-PNIAPM displays a good linear dependence on concentration of BSA (0-1 mg/mL), indicating quantitative fluorimetric protein detection can be achieved. Further addition of anionic surfactant of sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) considerably raised the FL intensity of the complex solution. All the FL response was discussed in term of conformational freedom of the TP unit under different environmental constraints.