SMART MATERIALS
Smart boron-containing materials, used in devices such as OLEDs, need to be able to deliver efficient function and stability over long device lifetimes.
A highly stable carbon-boron bond is required for these applications. We will design and test new borylated building blocks that are immune to ‘release’ of the organic fragment, under a wide range of operating conditions. This will broaden the conditions that the devices will tolerate and increase their application scope.
The incorporation of boron into polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) has attracted significant attention as a method for modulating key optoelectronic properties. Deep blue emitting OLEDs are one category that will be targeted.
Advanced boron-based porous materials will also be targeted as part of this research area. Nanoporous materials (i.e. microporous and/or mesoporous) are of great technological importance for adsorption, separation and heterogeneous catalysis due to their large and accessible surface areas. The McKeown group have demonstrated that a network of covalent bonds is not a requirement for microporous organic materials. A family of non-network polymers is described that form microporous solids simply because their highly rigid and contorted molecular structures cannot fill space efficiently. The profound significance of these polymers of intrinsic microporosity (PIMs) is that, unlike conventional microporous materials, they are soluble and can be processed readily using solvent-based techniques.
The synthesis of a range of brominated-B n -containing (n = 1, 2) polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is achieved simply by reacting BBr 3 with appropriately substituted alkynes via a bromoboration/electrophilic C–H borylation sequence
Bromo-functionalized B 1 -polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) with LUMOs of less than −3.0 eV were synthesized and used in cross-couplings to form donor–acceptor materials. These materials spanned a range of S 1 energies, with a number showing thermally activated delayed fluorescence and significant emission in the near-infrared region of the spectrum. These B 1 -PAHs represent a useful family of acceptors that can be readily synthesized and functionalized
Example of a PIM – Polymer of intrinsic microporosity
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