Introduction

1 April 2024

My PhD project involved the synthesis and characterisation of conducting polymers with cholesterol for potential bioelectronic applications. On 20 March 2024, I submitted my thesis to nominated reviewers (I am not allowed to know who they are). For the past two weeks, I have been thinking of many ideas for potential publications. However, before I can publish anything, my supervisors need to read what I wrote.... Last week, I sent the first paper. (I have also finished 3 other drafts) While I wait for comments, I have been working on the second and third and came up with so many things that I can write about. Considering that they are very slow with reviewing my work, I am losing hope that I will be able to publish anything at all.

Therefore, I decided that while I have the time and the joy for writing, I am going to update this blog with all the knowledge that I have acquired.

Cholesterol is an interesting biomolecule that has potential to induce crystallinity and higher levels of molecular ordering, a property that is underutilised in the synthesis of conjugated polymers. Therefore, this section aims to detail ways in which scientists have utilised cholesterol and how it can be further used to achieve desired order in conjugated polymers in the future. I will not refer to any of my work that is being used for manuscript preparation. All the unpublished data that I refer to will not be published in academic journals.

This section will begin with the structure, function and physicochemical properties of cholesterol, the biochemistry and pharmacology, then shift towards how material scientists use cholesterol in the synthesis of polymers and finally how cholesterol can be better manipulated to achieve a high level of order that is desired in semi-conducting polymers.