Designed Synthesis and Assembly of Molecular Building-Blocks for New Materials

摘要

The project centered on the designed synthesis of small metallacarborane sandwich complexes for use as building-blocks in the construction of new families of electroactive, magnetoactive, and/or optically active materials. The compounds of interest exhibit generally high thermal and oxidative stability, chemical versatility, electronic tunability, and solubility in organic solvents. Synthetic routes were developed for several new classes of multi-metallic metallacarborane clusters that are bifunctional and suitable as precursors to novel metallopolymers. These include B-B, B-X-B (X = alkene, alkyne, or aryl), and M-M linked C2B4M clusters, arene- and carborane-endcapped multidecker sandwiches, and B-halo species. Strategies for preparing high molecular weight electronically active materials from these compounds were explored. Concurrently with the synthetic work, the electronic structures, nonlinear optical properties, and other aspects of selected systems were investigated in detail, partly in collaboration with other laboratories.