Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have attracted tremendous interest because of their extensive applications in the optoelectronic arena. Heteroatom doping into PAHs is a powerful approach for modifying key physical properties. Especially, the introduction of electron deficient three coordinate boron atoms into PAHs is an attractive strategy to reduce the LUMO energy. Boron-containing PAHs exhibit unique optical and electronic properties. While there are many established routes to form all carbon PAHs, methods for constructing boron-doped PAHs are relatively limited. Therefore, designing boron-doped PAHs and exploring their structure–property relationship are of great significance. Firstly, borapentacene derivatives have been found to undergo an unusual photoisomerization in THF upon irradiation at 365 nm. This results in the formation of a rare structure with boron doped six-membered ring. Secondly, we successfully introduced strongly electron-withdrawing dicyanmethylene into triarylboron, which showed chemical robustness, reversible redox characteristics and significant crystallization-induced emission enhancement (CIEE) phenomenon. Last but not least, a series of triaryboron based B/N spiro compounds were constructed by virtue of the electronic characteristic of boron and high molecular rigidity of spiro structure. The introduction of various donor and acceptor combinations on the spiro structures allows us to tune the emission color and is compatible with TADF properties.

Construction of functionalized boron-containing polycyclic molecules

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.