Antiaromatic bisindeno-[n]thienoacenes with small singlet biradical characters: Syntheses, structures and chain length dependent physical properties

Xueliang Shi, Paula Mayorga Burrezo, Sangsu Lee, Wenhua Zhang, Bin Zheng, Gaole Dai, Jingjing Chang, Juan Teodomiro Lõpez Navarrete, Kuo-Wei Huang, Dongho Kim, Juan Casado, Chunyan Chi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

59 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent studies demonstrated that aromaticity and biradical character play important roles in determining the ground-state structures and physical properties of quinoidal polycyclic hydrocarbons and oligothiophenes, a kind of molecular materials showing promising applications for organic electronics, photonics and spintronics. In this work, we designed and synthesized a new type of hybrid system, the so-called bisindeno-[n]thienoacenes (n = 1-4), by annulation of quinoidal fused α-oligothiophenes with two indene units. The obtained molecules can be regarded as antiaromatic systems containing 4n π electrons with small singlet biradical character (y0). Their ground-state geometry and electronic structures were studied by X-ray crystallographic analysis, NMR, ESR and Raman spectroscopy, assisted by density functional theory calculations. With extension of the chain length, the molecules showed a gradual increase of the singlet biradical character accompanied by decreased antiaromaticity, finally leading to a highly reactive bisindeno[4]thienoacene (S4-TIPS) which has a singlet biradical ground state (y0= 0.202). Their optical and electronic properties in the neutral and charged states were systematically investigated by one-photon absorption, two-photon absorption, transient absorption spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry and spectroelectrochemistry, which could be correlated to the chain length dependent antiaromaticity and biradical character. Our detailed studies revealed a clear structure-aromaticity-biradical character-physical properties-reactivity relationship, which is of importance for tailored material design in the future. This journal is
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)4490-4503
Number of pages14
JournalChem. Sci.
Volume5
Issue number11
DOIs
StatePublished - 2014

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Chemistry

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