An electrochemically highly amphoteric nanographene was synthesized and characterized experimentally and theoretically. The synthetic strategy involves the attainment of a tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) derivative with two diamine moieties which also plays a crucial role in the development of diverse TTF-based functional materials.
The compound absorbs intensely in the visible spectral region and shows fluorescence with quantum efficiency of 0.05. The direct fusion of ovalene units to the TTF core dramatically enhances the intermolecular p–p interactions. The picture shows the calculated electrostatic potential of the compound.

This work was carried out by Dr. Shi-Xia Liu et al. in the group of Prof. Silvio Decurtins.

References:

• H.-P. Jia, J. Ding, Y.-F. Ran, S.-X. Liu, C. Blum, I. Petkova, A. Hauser and S. Decurtins;
  "Targeting p-Conjugated Multiple Donor-Acceptor Motifs Exemplified by Tetrathia-fulvalene (TTF)-Linked Quinoxalines and Tetrabenz[bc,ef,hi,uv]ovalenes: Synthesis, Spectroscopic, Electrochemical, and Theoretical Characterization"
  Chem. Asian J., 6, 3312-3321, (2011); doi:10.1002/asia.201100515.