Cyclic Aromatic Nano-Ribbons – CANaRi

Often seen as chemical curiosities, non-planar polycyclic aromatic compounds are now emerging as a new research area. This synthetic chemistry project aims at combining the domains of helicenes and carbon nanobelts, to push again their limits. Helicenes induce a twist once inserted in a cyclic nanoribbon, changing a nanobelt into a Möbius band. This would be the first example of a topologically non trivial polycyclic aromatic compound, and will undoubtedly exhibit unusual electronic and chiroptical properties. We have developed a polyvalent strategy for the synthesis of large polycyclic aromatic compounds with carboxy substituents that allow high solubility of the molecules, as well as modulation of their electronic properties. Based on the Perkin reaction between arylacetic and arylglyoxylic building blocks, this method has produced a large variety of molecular architectures (nanoribbons, poly-helicenes, conjugated macrocycles) thus fulfilling all the requirements for this project.