A new series of pure and highly soluble oligodiacetylenes (ODAs) was synthesized in high yield and on a multi-milligram scale by a sequence of Sonogashira reactions with a strongly reduced level of homocoupling. The lambda max and epsilon max of these ODAs show an increase with both chain elongation and solvent polarity. A plot of lambda max absorption versus 1/CL (CL=conjugation length) was shown to be linear. The lambda max converges to 435 nm for the longest members of the series at micromolar concentration. This reveals that the longest wavelength absorption observed for PDA chains (lambda max up to 700 nm) is due to aggregation effects. The fluorescence quantum yield increased from monomer to trimer and decreased for longer ODAs. A similar trend is found for the lifetime of fluorescence with a maximum of 600 ps for the trimer. The observed linearity of the rotational correlation time with the oligomer length implies that the ODA chains in solution lack significant geometrical changes. This implies that the ODAs in solution are fully stretched molecular rods of up to 4 nm in length.

A new series of pure, nanometer-sized and highly-soluble homocoupled oligodiacetylenes (HODA) consisting of two symmetrical oligodiacetylene units was synthesized with high yield and on a multi-milligram scale under mild, catalytic Sonogashira conditions. The lambda(max) and the epsilon(max) of absorption for these HODAs show an increase with the chain elongation. The lambda(max) converges to 450 nm for the longest members of the series at micromolar concentration and to 462 nm for thin drop-casted films. An additional red-shifted absorption is observed in the solid state and in solution at low temperatures, which is caused by aggregation. The lambda(max) of the fluorescence emission increases with the chain length and reaches 492 nm for the longest oligomer. The fluorescence quantum yield has its maximum for the shortest oligomer and decreases rapidly for the longer ones. A similar trend is found for the fluorescence lifetime with a maximum of 100 ps for the homocoupled monomer. The rotational correlation time shows a linear increase with the oligomer length. This reveals a significant persistence length and indicates that the HODA molecules are fully stretched molecular rods (up to 8.2 nm).

Novel and highly soluble hybrid conjugated organic oligomers consisting of oligodiacetylene and thiophene units have been synthesized in high purity through iterative and divergent approaches based on a sequence of Sonogashira reactions. The series of thiophene-containing oligodiacetylenes (ThODAs) and homocoupled ThODAs (HThODAs) show--both in solution and in the solid state--a strong optical absorption, which is progressively red shifted with increasing chain length. The linear correlation of the absorption maximum (lambda(A)(max)) with the inverse of conjugation length (CL = number of double and triple bonds) shows that the effective conjugation length of this system is extended up to at least CL = 20. Furthermore, absorption measurements of dropcast thin films display not only a bathochromic shift of the absorption maxima but also a higher wavelength absorption, which is attributed to increased pi-pi interactions. The wavelength of the maximum fluorescence emission (lambda(E)(max)) also increases with CL, and emission is maximal for oligomers with CL=7-12 (fluorescence quantum yield Phi(F) = approximately 0.2). Both longer and shorter oligomers display marginal emission. The calculated Stokes shifts of these planar materials are relatively large (0.4 eV) for all oligomers, and likely due to excitation to the S(2) state, thus suggesting that the presence of enyne moieties dominates the ordering of the lowest excited states. The fluorescence lifetimes (tau(F)) are short (tau(F,max) =<<1 ns) and closely follow the tendency obtained for the fluorescence quantum yield. The anisotropy lifetimes show a near-linear increase with CL, in line with highly rigid oligomers.

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High yields of the radical cations of oligodiacetylenes have been prepared by photoinduced electron transfer using a positively charged cosensitizer and by pulse radiolysis. The absorption maxima of the oligodiacetylene (ODA) radical cations show a bathochromic shift to the infrared region and a large increase of their lifetimes with chain elongation. Their reactivity toward nucleophiles decreases for longer ODAs, illustrating clearly the stabilizing effect of charge delocalization along the oligomeric chain. This also implies a very low reactivity of ODA radical cations toward trace amounts of water in optoelectronic devices.