Innocent BN bond substitution in anthracene derivatives.

Extended azaborine heterocycles are promising biomedical and electronic materials. Herein we report the synthesis of a novel family of azaborine anthracene derivatives and their structural, electrochemical and spectroscopic characterization. We observe that the properties of these materials are remarkably similar to the parent hydrocarbons, suggesting the innocence of the CC to BN bond substitution. Our results support the prospective stability to long-term usage of extended azaborines and the feasibility of using such materials in device applications.

Increased carrier mobility in end-functionalized oligosilanes.

We show that a class of oligosilane-arene σ, π-hybrid materials exhibits distinct and enhanced solid-state electronic properties relative to its parent components. In the single crystal structure, the σ-conjugation axis of one molecule points towards the π-face of a neighboring molecule due to an unusual gauche conformation. This organization is hypothesized to be beneficial for charge transport. We show that solution-deposited crystalline films of the hybrid materials show up to a 100-fold increase in space-charge limited current (SCLC) mobility relative to literature reports of photoinduced hole transport in oligosilane films. The discovery that σ, π-hybrids are more than the sum of their parts offers a design opportunity for new materials.