Stille, Suzuki-Miyaura and Negishi cross-coupling reactions of bromine-functionalised borylated precursors enable the facile, high yielding, synthesis of borylated donor-acceptorm aterialst hat contain electron-rich aromatic units and/or extendede ffective conjugation lengths. These materials have large Stokes shifts, low LUMO energies, small band-gapsa nd significant fluorescencee mission > 700 nm in solution and when dispersed in ahost polymer.
IntroductionNear-infrared (NIR) absorbing ande missive molecules have attracted significanti nterest due to potential applications including night-vison displays, sensors and in-vivo imaging. [1,2] Generating organic NIR emitters that have appreciable quantum yields is challenging due to the energy gap law where the emission efficiency reduces with decreasing energy gap. [3] This is exacerbated in the solid state as aggregation often leads to additionaln on-radiative pathways and significant emission quenching. [4] Onee ffective strategy for accessing low-bandgap materials is to construct p-conjugated systems containing donor (D) and acceptor( A) groups. [5] However, D-A materials with appreciable solid state NIR emissiona re currently rare, [2d] therefore new low-band-gap D-A materials are desirable, particularly if accessible by simple modular routes.Another attractive property of D-A materials is the large degree of controlo ver the electronic and optical properties by rational structural modification.F or example, the coordination of aL ewis acid to aL ewis basic site on an acceptorm oiety has been previously used to generate D-A materials with low LUMO energies and small band-gaps. [6] Ar elated approach that generates D-A materials that are more stable to moisture and Lewis bases appendsB R 2 moietiest oac onjugated framework throughf ormationo faC ÀBb ond and ad ative bond from the acceptor to the boronc entre. [7] We have recently utilised this methodology to synthesise borylated 9,9-dioctylfluorene-benzothiadiazole (F8-BT)c ontaining D-A materials by directedelectrophilicb orylation which concomitantly formsaCBa nd aN !Bb ond. [8] This borylation reactionp lanarises the conjugated backboneg eneratingr igid structures with extended effective conjugation lengths.T hese fused materials showed large Stokes shifts, low band-gaps, were stable to H 2 O and O 2 and wereh ighly emissive in solution and the solid state;f or example, F8-BT-F8 functionalised with aB Ph 2 group was highly emissive in the solid state (PLQY3 3% with l max = 696 nm). [8] Whilst notable it is desirable to develop synthetic routest or apidly access analogues with lower band-gapst hat were highly emissive in the solids tate with emissionf urther into the NIR (l max @ 700 nm).As imple approacht od eliver these materials is to introduce more electron-rich donor units than F8 and/or to extend the effective conjugation length.H owever,c oupling other donor units to F8-BT generates unsymmetric F8-BT-D materials that complicates the electrophilic borylation step, particularly wheree lectr...