High Proton-Conductivity in Covalently Linked Polyoxometalate-Organoboronic Acid-Polymers.
The controlled bottom-up design of polymers with metal oxide backbones is a grand challenge in materials design, as it could give unique control over the resulting chemical properties. Herein, we report a 1D-organo-functionalized polyoxometalate polymer featuring a purely inorganic backbone. The polymer is self-assembled from two types of monomers, inorganic Wells-Dawson-type polyoxometalates, and aromatic organo-boronates. Their covalent linkage results in 1D polymer strands, which combine an inorganic oxide backbone (based on B-O and Nb-O linkages) with functional organic side-chains. The polymer shows high bulk proton conductivity of up to 1.59×10-1  S cm-1 at 90 °C and 98 % relative humidity. This synthetic approach could lead to a new class of organic-inorganic polymers where function can be designed by controlled tuning of the monomer units.
['Li|Shujun|S|', 'Zhao|Yue|Y|', 'Knoll|Sebastian|S|', 'Liu|Rongji|R|', 'Li|Gang|G|', 'Peng|Qingpo|Q|', 'Qiu|Pengtao|P|', 'He|Danfeng|D|', 'Streb|Carsten|C|http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5846-1905', 'Chen|Xuenian|X|']
polyoxometalate self-assembly boronic acid organo-functionalization supramolecular chemistry