We have developed two novel, isomeric compounds of phenyl-substituted dinaphtho [2,3-b:2¤,3¤-d]furan (Ph-DNF-VW and Ph-DNF-VV) using a facile synthetic protocol. Notably, Ph-DNF-VW has been shown to be a strong candidate for lightemitting device applications: it forms a herringbone-packing structure with effective CH£π interactions between phenyl moieties, and exhibits a high thermal stability in the crystal phase in air and a high fluorescence quantum yield in the solid state. Additionally, its carrier mobility is comparable to that of amorphous silicon.Keywords: V-shaped organic semiconductor | Sky-blue emission | Organic field-effect transistor (OFET)Organic semiconducting materials have attracted great interest as active layers for next-generation printable and flexible electronic devices. A large number of carrier-transporting materials based on π-electron-conjugated molecules have been developed, exhibiting mobilities greater than those of amorphous silicon (0.51.0 cm 2 V ¹1 s ¹1 ). Additional functionalities such as luminescence 1 and sensing 2 are fascinating characteristics in organic semiconductors, and have been areas of focus in recent research. Recently, we developed an oxygen-bridged, V- Figure 1), which exhibits a high mobility (up to 1.1 cm 2 V ¹1 s
¹1) and blue-emissive characteristics with a high quantum efficiency (Φ F = 72%) even in the solid state, 3 whereas the sulfur-bridged congener exhibits very weak photoluminescence with Φ F of lower than 3%.This light-element, oxygen-bridged core structure could provide a framework for the synthesis of further materials that may be applicable as light emitters in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) 4 or transistors (OLETs). 5 Furthermore, the addition of alkyl chains to these structures aids the solution processing of the materials and promotes the precise control of aggregate structures that are desirable for effective charge transport. However, alkylated DNF-Vs showed a rather low emission efficiency compared to the parent DNF-V species, probably because the changes in structural dynamics induced by the presence of the long, flexible alkyl chains led to an overall increase in the nonradiative decay rate constant. In this work, we focus on the replacement of flexible alkyl chains with rigid phenyl substituents. 6 As well as altering the structural properties, the phenyl substituents can also elevate the HOMO energy level by extending π-conjugation over the system: this may yield improvements in device performance over the parent DNF-V species, specifically in charge-carrier injection from the electrodes, and in the threshold voltage in organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). In this paper, we describe facile synthesis of two isomeric, phenyl-substituted DNF-V derivatives, where the phenyl groups are located at either the 3,9-or 2,10-positions on the DNF-V core (the two compounds are hereafter referred to as Ph-DNF-VW and Ph-DNF-VV as shown in Figure 1). We clarify the influence of the substitution position on their crystal structures, and on the...