DOE OSTI2013
There has been increased interest in the design and applications of small polyaromatic molecules for energy conversion and storage, organic transistors and OLEDs, and other emerging areas of modern technology.[1] In particular, functionalized polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were shown to demonstrate excellent electrical mobilities, in organic thin-film transistors, in some cases even under ambient conditions.[2] It has been suggested that air stability of such organic materials is correlated with their electronic properties, and more specifically, with a high electron affinity.[3] Until recently, geodesic PAHs, such as corannulene[4] or sumanene[5] and their numerous derivatives have not been seriously considered for optoelectronic applications because (i) they typically possess very low electron affinities (e.g., EA(C20H10) = 0.5(1) eV),[6] and (ii) laborious multistep syntheses with moderate-to-low yields made them practically unavailable for such studies.[7] Although the low availability of sumanene remains unchanged, significant progress has been made lately in the large-scale synthesis of corannulene.[8] Furthermore, our recent work demonstrated that functionalization of corannulene molecule with electron withdrawing groups (EWGs) results in drastic enhancement of its electron acceptor properties.[9] In particular, for trifluoromethylated derivative C20H5(CF3)5, a 950 mV positive shift in the reduction potential relative to the parent C20H10 was measured. We also predicted that other EWGs, including halogen atoms or cyanide group, could be used to enhance electron affinity of corannulene. Nearly linear correlation between the number of EWGs and the electron affinity (reduction potential) of the corresponding EWG-substituted corannulene molecules that was demonstrated by our DFT calculations, and, more recently, confirmed for C20H10-x(CF3)x=2,3,[10] provides a good tool for design of the molecules with desired electronic properties. Here, we report the first synthesis, structure, and electronic properties (in solution and in the gas phase) of the derivative of corannulene, which has a higher electron affinity (EA) than a well-studied acceptor fullerene C60
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory↗