A Boat-Shaped Tetracationic Macrocycle with a Semiconducting Organic Framework.

We report the synthesis of a tetracationic macrocycle which contains two N,N'-bis(methylene)naphthalenediimide units inserted in between the pyridinium rings of the bipyridinium units in cyclobis(paraquat-p-phenylene) (CBPQT4+ or "blue box") and describe the investigation of its potential use in materials for organic electronics. The incorporation of the two naphthalenediimide (NDI) units into the constitution of CBPQT4+ , not only changes the supramolecular properties of the tetracation in the solid state, but also has a profound influence on the electrochemical and electronic behavior of the resulting tetracationic macrocycle. In particular, the solid-state (super)structure, investigated by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, reveals the formation of a three-dimensional (3D) supramolecular framework with ca. 2.8 nm diameter one-dimensional (1D) hexagonal channels. Electrochemical studies on solid-state thin films of the macrocycle show that they exhibit semiconducting properties with a redox-conductivity of up to 7.6×10-4  S m-1 . Moreover, EPR and ENDOR spectroscopies show that charge is equally shared between the NDIs within the one-electron reduced state of the NDI-based macrocycle on the time scale of these techniques.