Construction of Hydrocarbon Nanobelts

Abstract Linearly fused hydrocarbon nanobelts are a unique type of double‐stranded macrocycles that would serve as not only the powerful hosts in supramolecular science but also the templates to grow zig‐zag carbon nanotubes with defined diameters. Fully conjugated hydrocarbon nanobelts such as belt n arenes would also possess unique physical and chemical properties. Despite the importance, both fully conjugated and (partially) saturated hydrocarbon nanobelts remain largely unexplored because of the lack of cyclization methods. Reported here is the construction of nanometer sized H 12 ‐belt12arenes based on the strategy to close up all fjords of resorcin6arene by means of six‐fold intramolecular alkylation reactions of resorcin6arene derivatives. All resulting H 12 ‐belt12arenes produce a very similar nanobelt core structure with six benzene rings and six boat 1,4‐cyclohexadiene rings being alternately linear‐fused to give a nearly equilateral hexagonal cylinder. The average long diagonal is around 1 nm and the height of the cylinder is about 0.3 nm. The acquired H 12 ‐belt12arenes would be the potential precursors to various hydrocarbon nanobelts including fully conjugated belt12arenes.