Practical synthesis of an open geodesic polyarene with a fullerene-type 6:6-double bond at the center: diindeno[1,2,3,4-defg;1',2',3',4'-mnop]chrysene

Hindy E Bronstein; Neil Choi; Lawrence T Scott

doi:10.1021/ja0123148

Practical synthesis of an open geodesic polyarene with a fullerene-type 6:6-double bond at the center: diindeno[1,2,3,4-defg;1',2',3',4'-mnop]chrysene

J Am Chem Soc. 2002 Jul 31;124(30):8870-5. doi: 10.1021/ja0123148.

Authors

Hindy E Bronstein¹, Neil Choi, Lawrence T Scott

Affiliation

¹ Department of Chemistry, Merkert Chemistry Center, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts 02467-3860, USA.

PMID: 12137541
DOI: 10.1021/ja0123148

Abstract

Diindeno[1,2,3,4-defg;1',2',3',4'-mnop]chrysene (1), the smallest possible alkene-centered C60 substructure with a curved pi-system, is obtained in 25-35% yield by flash vacuum pyrolysis of the twisted 1,1'-dibromobifluorenylidene (2) on a 100 mg scale at 1050 degrees C. At 1200 degrees C, the bowl-shaped hydrocarbon 1 rearranges to the planar isomer diindeno[5,6,7,1-defg;5',6',7',1'-lmnop]chrysene (14) by a double 5/6 ring-expansion/ring-contraction. X-ray crystallography establishes that the central carbon atoms of 1 are nearly 80% as pyramidalized as the carbon atoms of C60 (POAV angles = 9.0 degrees and 11.6 degrees for 1 and C60, respectively). A four-step synthesis has been developed to prepare the pyrolysis precursor (2) as a mixture of (E)- and (Z)-isomers in 39% overall yield from commercially available 9-fluorenone-1-carboxylic acid (10).