Dicyclopenta[ghi,pqr]perylene as a Structural Motif for Bowl-Shaped Hydrocarbons: Synthetic and Conformational...

Dicyclopenta[ghi,pqr]perylene (DCPP) is a substructural fragment on the surface of C₇₀ yet not on C₆₀. Unlike its intensely investigated buckybowl cousins, corannulene and sumanene, DCPP is largely ignored due to the lack of synthetic accessibility. This communication describes the first preparation of a DCPP derivative from bay substituted perylene bis(4-(trifluoromethyl)phenyl)methanol as the key cyclization precursor. Further incorporation of indeno substitutions at peri positions was accomplished through Suzuki-Heck benzannulation. DCPP derivatives 4 adopts a planar structure in crystal. On the contrary, indeno DCPP 5 and bis-indeno DCPP 6 adopt the bowl-shaped conformation in both the solid state and solution. Density functional theory (DFT) calculation reveals that the lowest-energy conformations of 4, 5, and 6 are all bowl-shaped. Nevertheless, small bowl-to-bowl inversion barrier for 4 (3.4 kcal/mol) is overcome by the crystal packing force, which leads to its observed planar structure. However, the bowl-shaped structures of 5 and 6 are affirmed by DFT calculation with intermediate and high bowl-to-bowl inversion barriers (10.4 and 18.5 kcal/mol, respectively).