Takanori Suzuki, Yusuke Ishigaki, Kazuma Sugawara, Yu Umezawa, Ryo Katoono, Atsushi Shimoyama, Yoshiyuki Manabe, Koichi Fukase, Takanori Fukushima
Tetrahedron 74 (18) 2239 - 2244 1464-5416 2018/05/03
[Refereed][Not invited] 2,3,6,7,11,11,12,12-Octaphenyl-1,4,5,8-tetraaza-9,10-anthraquinodimethane was prepared as a sterically hindered molecule from 2,3,6,7-tetraphenyl-1,4,5,8-tetraaza-9,10-anthraquinone via bis(dibromomethylene) derivative through the quadruple Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reaction. An X-ray analysis revealed that steric repulsion is relieved mainly by twisting the exomethylene bonds, which is less common deformation for hindered quinodimethanes. According to the DFT calculations, the folded geometry with bent exomethylene bonds is the metastable conformer, and thus the nitrogen atoms at peri-positons and polyaryl substituents induce novel switching for the preferred geometry of 9,10-anthraquinodimethane skeleton from the common bent form to the twisted form, which causes a decrease in the HOMO-LUMO-gap energy by ca. 1 eV.