A convenient method of producing thiophene linked bipyridine oligomers

A series of soluble polybipyridine ligands comprising one to five bipyridine modules sandwiched between rigid carbon–carbon triple bonds substituted by 3,4-dibutylthiophene repeating units was synthesized. Two different protocols have been explored with the idea to use a divergent/convergent approach starting from bisymmetrically and symmetrically substituted bipyridine modules. At each stage of the iteration two bipy/thiophene modules are connected. The use of triethylsilylacetylene and 2-methylbut-3-yn-2-ol insures an easy entry to pivotal building blocks, which could be selectively deprotected from the TES or 2-hydroxyprop-2-yl sites. All cross-coupling reactions are promoted with palladium(0) tetrakistriphenylphosphine under mild conditions.