While large acenes like heptacene are predicted to have attractive electronic properties, they rapidly oxidize under ambient conditions, a serious limitation that becomes increasingly problematic with increasing acene length.
In order to utilize large acenes as semiconducting nanoelements in the low cost, high-rate manufacture of electronic devices including OFETs and OLEDs, they must first be made resistant to oxidation. Using newly discovered substituent effects as a guide, we have now demonstrated the formation of an unusually persistent heptacene derivative that can be explored as a semiconducting nanoelement in OFET and OLED applications.
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Image: (Top) Normalized absorbances for four heptacene derivatives as a function of time exposed to light and air (1x10-4 M initial conc.) at 25 oC. (Bottom) Normalized UV-vis (blue line) and fluorescence (green line) spectra of the heptacene derivative that shows unusual resistance to oxidation. The long wavelength absorptions in the UV-vis spectrum indicate a small bandgap semiconductor while the fluorescence spectrum indicates green light emission. Reproduced with permission from Kaur I, et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2009;131(10):3424-3425. Copyright 2009 American Chemical Society.
