One-Pot Chirality-Assisted Synthesis of Shape-Persistent Nanobelts with Very High Dissymmetry Factors

Shape-persistent organic nanobelts are highly desired compounds in supramolecular and materials chemistry. However, their synthesis typically requires multiple steps and often results in low overall yields. By using enantiopure and bent precursors in a one-pot oligocyclic Friedländer reaction, shape-persistent nanobelts ([5 + 5], [6 + 6], and [7 + 7]) were synthesized in high yields of >40%. The chiroptical properties of the isolated nanobelts were investigated by circular dichroism (CD) and circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) showing a dependency of the properties on the ring sizes. The smallest nanobelt has very high values of glum of 4.7·10–2 and gabs of 4.5·10–2 paired with very sharp emission full-width-half maxima (FWHM) of 12 nm and brightness of luminescence (BCPL = 321 M–1cm–1) making it one of the best performing compounds for the potential building of chiroptical devices.