The HOF·CH3CN complex, easily prepared by passing F2 through aqueous acetonitrile, is an exceptionally efficient oxygen transfer agent. All types of sulfides have been oxidized to sulfones in excellent yields, in a few minutes at room temperature. The reaction proceeds through the formation of sulfoxides which at low temperatures of around −75 °C could be isolated in good yields. It was demonstrated through a reaction with thianthrene 5-oxide (20) that HOF·CH3CN is strongly electrophilic in nature. Sulfides with an electron-depleted sulfur atom such as perfluoroalkyl or aryl sulfides, which could not be well oxidized by any other method, were also efficiently converted to the corresponding sulfones in minutes. Thiophenes are generally hard to oxidize to the corresponding S-dioxides since the conditions required by the orthodox oxidants encourage consecutive typical ene and diene reactions. HOF·CH3CN requires short reaction times and low temperatures, thus enabling the isolation of thiophene dioxides, some of which could not be made by any other way. It seems that apart from unprotected amines, other functional groups such as aromatic rings, ketones, hydroxyls, and ethers do not interfere, since the sulfur atom reacts considerably faster.

No abstract

Nonaromatic stable polyenes are obtained by dioxygenation of oligothiophenes using HOF⋅CH3CN prepared in situ by passing F2 through aqueous acetonitrile (see scheme). These fully S,S‐dioxygenated derivatives have a considerably smaller HOMO–LUMO gap than the parent compounds; furthermore, in the solid state they tend to form favorable π–π stacking interactions, unlike most non‐oxidized oligothiophenes which adopt the “herringbone” motif.

No abstract

A comprehensive photophysical and spectroscopic (electronic and Raman) study guided by density functional theory, DFT, CIS, and correlated ab initio calculations has been performed on a series of fully oxidized oligothiophenes with variable chain length, and up to four rings. A comparison with the properties of oligoenes and oligothiophenes is proposed. Absorption, fluorescence, lifetimes, flash-photolysis, phosphorescence, two-photon absorption, Raman, resonance Raman, and thermospectroscopy data are collected and interpreted according to the obtained theoretical results. The interest is focused on the ground electronic state and in the low-lying excited electronic states. Full oxygenation of the sulfur atoms of oligothiophenes results in: (i) restricted inter-ring isomerization such as observed from the absorption spectra; (ii) an effective quenching of fluorescence, and (iii) the appearance of dual emission. The emission features are explained by the interference of a dipole-allowed and a dipole-forbidden singlet excited states leading to simultaneous lighting from a local Frenkel and an intramolecular charge transfer photon-releasing configurations. These two excited states contribute to the broadening of the light emission spectrum. These properties highlight the similarity of these samples to that of oligoenes with comparable number of π-electrons.