Strained Aromatic Macrocycles as the Building Blocks for Functional Materials

Commonly viewed as the shortest cross sections of armchair carbon nanotubes (CNTs), cycloparaphenylenes (CPPs) represent a unique class of conjugated macrocycles with rigid backbones. In addition to their utility in seeding the growth of uniform CNTs, these strained nanohoops and their derivatives have unique optoelectronic and supramolecular properties for potential applications in materials science. Herein we present our efforts in designing novel nanohoop architectures and new types of strained macrocycles that serve as building blocks for functional materials. Chapter I briefly reviewed the under-represented reactivity studies of strained aromatic macrocycles. Chapter II describes our early efforts in probing the structure-property relationships of oligophenylene macrocycles focusing on the understanding of the influence of structural bending and cyclic conjugation on the optoelectronic properties. Chapter III reports the reactivity study of 1,4-anthracene-incorporated [12]CPP, a model substrate to examine the feasibility of using anthracene as the functional handle to crosslink nanohoops. Chapter IV presents the synthesis of a molecular propeller with three nanohoop blades and examines its unique hexagonal layered packing structure. In Chapter V, we disclose the synthesis of strained stilbene macrocycles suitable for ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP) as well as the initial ROMP studies of this monomeric system. This dissertation contains previously published and unpublished coauthored materials