Diradicals and their driving forces

Abstract

Several series of aromatic and quinoidal compounds, such as oligothiophenes (Scheme 1), oligophenylene-vinylenes, oligoperylenes (oligophenyls) and graphene nanoribbon derivatives, are studied in the common context of the capability to stabilize diradical structures. [1,2,3,4]. In this work, we try to clarify how several driving forces (i.e., thermodynamic and entropic) are responsible for the generation of diradical and diradicaloid structures. A combination of different types of molecular spectroscopies (i.e., electronic absorption, electronic emission, excited state absorption, vibrational Raman, vibrational infrared, etc.) as well as hybridized with thermal and pressure-dependent techniques are shown to provide important information about the origin of the formation and stabilization of diradicals. From a conceptual point of view, we analyze these properties in the context of the oligomer approach which is the study of the evolution of these spectroscopic quantities as a function of the oligomer size.

References

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