“Atomistic Molecular Engineering
of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons”
Carbon-based materials, such as acenes, fullerenes, and graphene nanoribbons are considered as the potential successors to silicon in the next generation of electronics. Electronic properties of these materials can be further controlled and tuned through doping with heteroatoms such as nitrogen. Despite substantial progress towards the synthesis of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), strategies for the preparation of their nitrogendoped analogs remain at a nascent stage. Here, I present a facile approach for the preparation of nitrogen-containing PAHs via aza-Diels–Alder reactions followed by Heck-type reactions, and demonstrate this atomic substitution can control the optoelectronic and conformational properties of these organic materials.