Contributed talk

Design and synthesis of tailored triangulene-based molecular precursors
Manuel Vilas-Varela¹, F. Romero², A. Vegliante², D.G. de Oteyza³, J. I. Pascual², and D. Peña¹

1 Centro Singular de Investigación en Química Biológica y Materiales Moleculares (CiQUS), Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela
2 CIC nanoGUNE-BRTA, 20018 Donostia-San Sebastián
3 Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology Research Center (CINN), El Entrego, Asturias

Triangulenes are triangular polybenzenoid hydrocarbons with edges formed by zig-zag units. The conjugated lattice of triangulene is frustrated, depicting a non-Kekulé structure with unpaired π-electrons, resulting in high spin electronic ground state. The linear increase of spin state with the molecular size endows these systems with a strong potential for becoming functional platforms for molecular spintronics and quantum computing applications [1].

Owing to their open-shell character, the solution synthesis of triangulenes is very challenging. Instead, the on-surface synthesis (OSS) of triangulene starting from designed organic molecular precursors have demonstrated to be a viable route for the fabrication of atomically precise triangulenes with increasing size [2]. On the other hand, heteroatom substitution modifies the sublattice imbalance and, hence, the resulting spin state [3].

In this contribution, we present our recent advances in the design and synthesis of tailor- made aza-triangulene molecular precursors (i.e. 1, 2, 4) by means of solution chemistry, which can play a key role in the development of this field, allowing to reach high spin nanostructures with atomic precision.

[1] W. L. Wang et al., Phys. Rev. Lett., 102, 157201 (2009); J. Su et al. Angew. Chem. 132, 7730 (2020); W. Han et al. Nature Nanotech 9, 794 (2014)
[2] N. Pavliček et al., Nature Nanotech, 12, 308–311 (2017); S. Mishra et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 141, 10621 (2019)
[3] T. Wang et al. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 144, 4522–4529 (2022)