Palladium-catalyzed dehydrohalogenative polycondensation of 2-bromo-3-hexylthiophene: an efficient approach to head-to-tail poly(3-hexylthiophene).

Dehydrohalogenative polycondensation of 2-bromo-3-hexylthiophene was successful with Herrmann's catalyst and tris(2-dimethylaminophenyl)phosphine as catalyst precursors, giving head-to-tail poly(3-hexylthiophene) (HT-P3HT) with high molecular weight (M(n) = 30,600, M(w)/M(n) = 1.60) and high regioregularity (98%) in almost quantitative yield (99%).