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An open-cage C70 fullerene with a 13-membered ring-opening and a bis(hemiacetal) moiety was synthesized by the reaction of the corresponding open-cage C70 diketone with nucleophilic oxidizing agents. The size of the cage opening could be expanded by a subsequent dehydration reaction. Reaction of the thus obtained open-cage C70 tetraketone with elemental sulfur in the presence of tetrakis(dimethylamino)ethylene resulted in the formation of the first example of an open-cage C69S thiafuilerene with a 12-membered ring-opening. The formation of this sulfur-containing hetero-fullerene reflects a significantly different chemical reactivity for the open-cage C70 tetraketone relative to its C60 analogue. The structures of all novel compounds were unambiguously determined by single crystal X-ray diffraction analyses, in addition to which the electrochemical properties of the thiafuilerene C69S were examined and compared with those of the corresponding C70 analogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The synthesis of the methylfulvene- and phenylfulvene-annelated dihydropyrenes 10 and 22 from the cyclopentadiene-fused dihydropyrene 7 in 68% and 80% yields, respectively, are reported. However, the attempted formation of the parent fulvene-fused dihydropyrene 18 failed, both from the cyclopentadiene 7 with formaldehyde and from the cyclopentadienone 5 in Wittig-type reactions. Chemical shift data for the methylfulvene (35) and phenylfulvene (36)-fused dihydropyrenes 10 and 22 were used to estimate the reduction in the dihydropyrene nucleus aromaticity (DHPN) (relative to benzene fusion) in 10 and 22 (12-16% and 22-25% respectively). Calculations revealed that this reduction in diatropicity, contrary to the situation with benzene fusion, is not due to any aromaticity of the annelating fulvenes but instead is caused by Mills-Nixon-type effects. We conclude that methyl- and phenylfulvene are nonaromatic. An improved synthetic route to the cyclopentadienone 5 was found in an unprecedented cyclization of the trans-cinnamic acid analogue 29 in 80% yield. This enabled an X-ray structure of 5 to be obtained, for comparison to that of the saturated ketone 4. Even though crystals of 5 and 4 show diastereomeric disorder, when the average bond length data of cyclopentadienone 5 is compared with those of cyclopentenone 4 and the parent and benzo dihydropyrenes 6 and 33, it is clearly evident that 5 has the opposite bond- alternation pattern, consistent with a [4n] fused annulene. From the bond length data, cyclopentadienone has ∼87% of the effect of a benzene ring on bond alternation, which is in reasonable agreement with the previously found NMR value (78%). Structure and nucleus-independent chnmical shift calculations support these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A nanotubular metal-organic framework (MOF), {[(WS4Cu4)I2(dptz)3]·DMF}n (dptz = 3,6-di(pyridin-4-yl)-1,2,4,5-tetrazine, DMF = N,N-dimethylformamide) for sensing small solvent molecules is presented. When accommodating different solvent molecules as guests, the resulting inclusion compounds exhibit different colors depending on the solvent guests, and more interestingly, the band gaps of these solvent-included complexes are in linear correlation with the polarity of the guest solvents. The solvent molecules can be sensed by the changes of UV-vis spectra of the corresponding inclusion compounds, showing a new way of signal transduction as a new kind of sensor. The sensing by such a MOF occurs within the channel-containing material rather than on the external surface. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the charge transport through metalla-aromatics building blocks, three metallacycles complexes were synthesized, and their single-molecule conductances were characterized by using mechanically controllable break junction technique. It is found that the conductance of the metallacycles junction with phosphonium group is more than 1 order of magnitude higher than that without phosphonium group. X-ray diffraction and UV--vis absorption spectroscopy suggested that the attached phosphonium group makes metallacycles more delocalized, which shortened the preferred charge transport pathway and significantly enhanced the singlemolecule conductance. This work revealed that the delocalization of metalla-aromatics could be used to switch the charge transport pathway of single-molecule junctions and thus tune the charge transport abilities significantly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]