One-pot synthesis of core-expanded naphthalene diimides: enabling N-substituent modulation for diverse n-type organic materials.

A mild and versatile one-pot synthesis of core-expanded naphthalene diimides has been developed, which undergoes a nucleophilic aromatic substitution reaction and then an imidization reaction, allowing an easy and low-cost access to diverse n-type organic materials. Some newly synthesized compounds by this one-pot operation exhibited high electron mobility of up to 0.70 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) in ambient conditions.