Wood has been wildly used in human history for many different applications. In the sight of biobased material economy, one could hardly ignore this bio-sourced material for its fascinating properties. However, as a chemist we look at the wood structure from a molecular and macromolecular level. Today, More and more attention is on one of the major parts of wood, namely lignin. Lignin is a complex mixture of organic macromolecules, which can provide plenty of small aromatic bio-based molecules through depolymerization. 1
Starting from acetovanillone, an aromatic molecule that can be derived from lignin and combined that with sulfur, another substance occurs wildly in nature, enabled us to craft a novel polymer. This novel polymer was created by a new synthetic pathway, consisting of two types of aromatic cycles, thiophene and methoxyphenyl. The thiophene has already been wildly studied and developed as a repeating unit of conductive polymer for its interesting electro-chemical properties. 2 In this case the methoxyphenyl group provides option for relative-stable storage of electrons via the mechanism of demethylation. Combining both structures, the new biobased polymer showed quite encouraging energy storage capacity on cyclic voltammetry. Furthermore, the internal structure provides the possibility for further chemical modifications. The work opens a new access from bio-based molecules to polymeric materials for electro-chemical applications in the green material field.
1 Li, C.; Zhao, X.; Wang, A.; Huber, G.; Zhang, T.; Catalytic Transformation of Lignin for the Production of Chemicals and Fuels, Chem. Rev. 2015, 115 (21), 11559–11624. DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemrev.5b00155
2 Kaloni, T.; Giesbrecht, P.; Schreckenbach, G.; Freundformat, M.; Polythiophene: From Fundamental Perspectives to Applications, Chem. Mater. 2017, 29 (24), 10248–10283. DOI: acs.chemmater.7b03035