Biosourced Vanillin-Based Building Blocks for Organic Electronic Materials

Forest biomass is viewed as a significant source of organic carbon and thus the ideal replacement of petroleum products. From the resources derived from biomass, lignocellulose is the most abundant biobased material on earth. One of the aromatic added value compounds obtained from the depolymerization of lignin is vanillin. Here, we report the preparation of new compounds having benzothiophene, indole, isatin, benzofuroxan, benzofurazan, benzothiadiazole, and phthalimide heteroaromatic ring structures. More precisely, our results show that vanillin can be used as a biosourced starting material for the preparation of a variety of aromatic dibrominated monomers. X-ray crystallography on single crystals was also performed to obtain meaningful information on their solid-state ordering. This work opens the way to new, sustainable, biosourced aromatic materials (small molecules or polymers) for organic electronics.