ChemInform Abstract: Aromatic Metamorphosis of Dibenzothiophenes

In general, aromatic cores are stable owing to their resonance energies. Different from facile peripheral modifications of aromatic cores, transforming an aromatic core into a different skeleton is ambitious and has attracted only little attention as a general synthetic method. This personal account shows our journey to inventing transformations of dibenzothiophenes into triphenylenes, carbazoles, and spirocyclic diarylfluorenes and to establishing ‘aromatic metamorphosis’ as a useful and game-changing strategy in organic synthesis. 1 Introduction 2 Aromatic Metamorphosis 3 From Dibenzothiophenes to Triphenylenes 4 From Dibenzothiophenes to Carbazoles 5 From Dibenzothiophenes to Spirocyclic Tetraarylmethanes 6 Conclusion