Pauli Paramagnetism of Stable Analogues of Pernigraniline Salt Featuring Ladder-Type Constitution

Polyaniline derivatives represent one of the most widely used classes of conductive polymers. The fundamentally important electronic properties of pernigraniline salts, the fully oxidized and acid-doped derivatives of polyanilines, however, are still not well-understood due to their poor stability and configurational uncertainty. To address these issues and to synthetically access stable analogues of pernigraniline salts, ladder-type constitution was imparted into a series of model oligomer analogues with rigid backbones constituted by up to 27 fused rings. The syntheses were achieved through iterative cross-coupling reactions followed by cyclization and oxidation. In contrast to their unstable non-ladder-type counterparts, these ladder-type pernigraniline-like molecules all adopt a well-defined all-trans configuration and demonstrate an excellent chemical stability after protonation, rendering it possible to reveal the intrinsic electronic and magnetic properties of molecules resembling pernigraniline. Protonated salts of these oligomers feature a significant diradicaloid open-shell resonance contribution. A dominant temperature-independent Pauli paramagnetism was observed in the solid state, an indication of the delocalization nature of the polarons in ladder-type analogues of pernigraniline salt.