The first copper-catalyzed ring-opening electrophilic trifluoromethylation and trifluoromethylthiolation of cyclopropanols to form Csp3-CF3 and Csp3-SCF3 bonds have been realized. These transformations are efficient for the synthesis of β-CF3 and β-SCF3 substituted carbonyl compounds that are otherwise challenging to access. The reaction conditions are mild and tolerate a wide range of functional groups. Application to a concise synthesis of LY2409021, a glucagon receptor antagonist that is used in clinical trial for type 2 diabetes mellitus, is reported as well.

Printing of high‐resolution three‐dimensional nanostructures utilizing two‐photon polymerization has gained significant attention recently. In particular, isopropyl thioxanthone (ITX) has been implemented as a photoinitiator due to its capability of initiating and depleting polymerization on demand, but new photoinitiating materials are still needed in order to reduce the power requirements for the high‐throughput creation of 3D structures. To address this point, a suite of new thioxanthone‐based photoinitiators were synthesized and characterized. Then two‐photon polymerization was performed using the most promising photoinitiating molecule. Importantly, one of the initiators, 2,7‐bis[(4‐(dimethylamino)phenyl ethynyl)‐9H‐thioxanthen‐9‐one] (BDAPT), showed a fivefold improvement in the writing threshold over the commonly used ITX molecule. To elucidate the fundamental mechanism, the excitation and inhibition behavior of the BDAPT molecule were evaluated using density functional theory (DFT) calculations, low‐temperature phosphorescence spectroscopy, ultra‐fast transient absorption spectroscopy, and the two‐photon Z‐scan spectroscopic technique. The improved polymerization threshold of this new photoinitiator presents a clear pathway for the modification of photoinitiators in 3D nanoprinting. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Polym. Sci., Part B: Polym. Phys. 2019, 57, 1462–1475

Nanolithographic printing by direct laser writing (DLW) photopolymerization has attracted increased attention in recent years, as the speed of this printing has increased, while the feature sizes that have been realized have decreased well into the nanoscale regime. Specifically, isopropyl thioxanthone (ITX) has been utilized as one of the common photoinitiators in DLW polymerization processes because of its high-efficiency photoinitiating abilities and its ability to have its initiation properties inhibited through the application of a second wavelength of light. However, improved photoinitiating materials that are built from this successful archetype are required, by both academic and industrial circles, if advanced highthroughput nanomanufacturing techniques are to be implemented. Here, nextgeneration thioxanthone-based photoinitiators with tailored optical and charge transfer properties were computationally designed and subsequently synthesized. Particularly, branches with specifically modulated electron donor and electron acceptor qualities, relative to the ITX core, were coupled to the initial thioxanthone substrate. After having their molecular and optical properties characterized in full, it was evident that these initiators possessed a clear advancement in terms of photopolymerization initiation relative to ITX. As such, a champion photoinitiator chemistry was brought forward to demonstrate enhanced two-photon polymerization DLW such that superresolution properties were exhibited. In this way, we introduce a clear means by which to systematically design future photoinitiators for enhanced two-photon polymerization DLW nanoprinting processes.

We document the design, synthesis, and characterization of the first low glass transition temperature, n-type (i.e., preferentially-reduced) radical polymer.

Incorporating temperature- and air-stable organic radical species into molecular designs is a potentially advantageous means of controlling the properties of electronic materials. However, we still lack a complete understanding of the structure–property relationships of organic radical species at the molecular level. In this work, the charge transport properties of (2,2,6,6-tetramethyl­piperidin-1-yl)­oxyl (TEMPO) radical-containing nonconjugated molecules are studied using single-molecule charge transport experiments and molecular modeling. Importantly, the TEMPO pendant groups promote temperature-independent molecular charge transport in the tunneling region relative to the quenched and closed-shell phenyl pendant groups. Results from molecular modeling show that the TEMPO radicals interact with the gold metal electrodes near the interface to facilitate a high-conductance conformation. Overall, the large enhancement of charge transport by incorporation of open-shell species into a single nonconjugated molecular component opens exciting avenues for implementing molecular engineering in the development of next-generation electronic devices based on novel nonconjugated radical materials.