Efficient construction of 2D and 3D polyaryls for molecular (opto)electronics (Staggarenes)

该项目将展示一种广泛适用的自下而上战略，以提供在重要技术领域具有广泛应用潜力的新型有机材料。有机电子学、光子学和光电子学已经对我们的日常生活产生了巨大的影响，并且还有很大的潜力。有机元件在电子和显示设备、照明、电池、导电油墨等领域提供多种关键功能。全球市场巨大且不断扩大（1500亿美元），尤其是因为它们的多功能性和相对较低的环境影响。它们作为太阳能捕获组件的重要性正在增长，可能对减少我们对化石燃料的依赖至关重要。有机材料确实有缺点。需要高纯度的材料，合成（特别是在合理的规模下）和稳定性都可能是一个问题。我们的目标是同时解决这些问题，通过基于合成方案设计新的、稳定的材料，这些材料可以重复或容易适应，以快速、可重复地提供优化的系统。我们的目标分子可以被看作是21世纪神奇材料石墨烯的单个和离散碎片。在我们的方法中，我们首先通过以偏移（交错）方式顺序添加3环（蒽）单元来构建分子片。这些薄片将被其他新的化学物质以一种理论上可以无限迭代的方式横向扩展。另外，将开发一种策略，使薄片弯曲，并将两端连接起来，形成一个离散的管（碳纳米管碎片）。新材料将通过表征其光物理性质来评估，以选择最佳衍生物，通过额外的合作转化为应用。

This project will demonstrate a widely applicable bottom-up strategy for delivery of new classes of organic materials with potential widespread application in important technological areas. Organic electronics, photonics and optoelectronics have already made huge impact on our everyday lives and there remains significant further potential. Organic components provide multiple crucial functions in electronic and display devices, lighting, batteries, conductive inks etc. The global market is huge and expanding (>$150 Bn), not least because of their versatility and relatively low environmental impact. Their importance as components in solar energy capture is growing and likely to be crucial for reducing our reliance on fossil fuels. Organic materials do have drawbacks. High purity materials are needed and both synthesis (especially at reasonable scale) and stability can be a problem. We aim to address these issues in parallel, by designing new, stable materials based on synthesis protocols that can be repeated, or easily adapted, to rapidly and reproducibly deliver optimised systems. The molecules we target can be viewed as individual and discrete fragments of graphene, the wonder material of the 21st century. In our approach we first build the molecular sheet through the sequential addition of 3-ring (anthracene) units in an offset (staggered) fashion. The sheets will be extended laterally by other new chemistry in a manner that can theoretically iterate indefinitely. Separately, a strategy will be developed to bend the sheets and link the ends to form a discrete tube (a carbon nanotube fragment). The new materials will be evaluated by characterising their photophysical properties with a view to selecting optimum derivatives for translation to application through additional collaborations.