The covalent functionalization of photosynthetic proteins with properly tailored organic molecular antennas represents a powerful approach to build a new generation of hybrid systems capable of exploiting solar energy. In this paper the strategy for the synthesis of the tailored aryleneethynylene organic fluorophore (AE) properly designed to act as light harvesting antenna is presented along with its successful bioconjugation to the photosynthetic reaction center RC from the bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides .

White organic light emitting diodes (WOLEDs) are promising devices for application in low energy consumption lighting since they combine the potentialities of high efficiency and inexpensive production with the appealing features of large surfaces emitting good quality white light. However, lifetime, performances and costs still have to be optimized to make WOLEDs commercially competitive as alternative lighting sources. Development of efficient and stable emitters plays a key role in the progress of WOLED technology. This tutorial review discusses the main approaches to obtain white electroluminescence with organic and organometallic emitters. Representative examples of each method are reported highlighting the most significant achievements together with open issues and challenges to be faced by future research.

Light machine: The simplest photosynthetic protein able to convert sunlight in other energy forms is covalently functionalized with a tailored organic dye to obtain a fully functional hybrid complex that outperforms the natural system in light harvesting and conversion ability.

Fluorination has become a versatile route to tune the electronic and optical properties of organic conjugated materials. Herein we report a new phenomenon, excited-state switching by per-fluorination of para-oligophenylenes, placing a low intensity 11B2 state below the 11B1 state, giving rise to large Stokes shifts. The switching is attributed to the specific impact of fluorine on the delocalized and localized frontier orbitals as elucidated by quantum-chemical calculations. The sterical demands of the fluorine atom additionally diminish efficient conjugation along the chain, leading to hypsochromic shifts with respect to the unsubstituted counterparts and to a weak chain length dependence of the absorption and unstructured emission spectra and enhanced internal conversion.

White organic light emitting diodes (WOLEDs) represent a promising alternative to incandescent or fluorescent lamps and inorganic LEDs for low energy consumption lighting applications. WOLEDs combine the potentialities of high white color quality and low production costs with the distinctive feature of being available also as flexible and large area devices. Moreover, fine control of white color quality can be easily achieved by proper chemical design of organic electroluminescent materials. Here we survey the main chemical approaches to white organic electroluminescence, highlighting strong and weak points of each strategy.

Several organometallic methods are used to synthesize pi-conjugated molecules and polymers with alternating thiophene-dialkoxyphenylene units in the conjugated backbone. Here we describe our approaches to the synthesis of materials based on the dialkoxyphenylenethienylene structural motif via palladium catalyzed cross-coupling reactions of organomagnesium or organoboron reagents with aryl halides. The properties of the resulting compounds and their applications in (opto)electronic devices (organic field effect transistors, resistive gas sensors, field effect chiral sensors, photoelectrochemical cells and bulk-heterojunction solar cells) are also discussed, highlighting the role of the synthetic logic in the design of multifunctional organic materials.

Colloidal white emitting nanostructures were successfully fabricated by covalently binding a blue emitting oligofluorene at the surface of silica beads, that incorporate orange luminescent colloidal CdSe@ZnS quantum dots (QDs). White light was achieved by carefully tuning the size of the QDs to complementarily match the emission color of the blue fluorophore and taking into account the delicate balance between the emission of the QDs in the core of the silica beads and the amount of the organic dye bound to the silica surface. The proposed approach is highly versatile as it can be extended to the fabrication of a variety of luminescent hybrid nano-objects, playing with the complementarity of the emission color of the inorganic and organic fluorophores at the nanoscale.

Recent studies on the synthesis, properties and structural characterization of some Ir complexes with arylpyridine ligands have attracted considerable interest in both academic and industrial fields due to their use as phosphorescent materials in light emitting diodes (PHOLEDs)[1]. One of the main advantages offered by this class of Ir complexes is the possibility to careful control their light emission colour by suitably choosing the kind and position of substituent groups[2]. Latest literature also shows that the stereochemistry of these complexes has a significant influence on their photophysical properties and performance in devices[3]. Therefore, structural studies of these materials are very important in order to identify univocally the atomic arrangement of the compounds under investigation. In a recent publication, we have synthesized and spectroscopically characterized a series of heteroleptic iridium complexes functionalized with benzylsulfonyl groups and fluorine atoms in different positions of 2-phenylpyridine ligands. Investigation of the stereochemistry of these complexes has been firstly carried out by 1H and 13C and NMR spectroscopy of their iridium dichloro-bridged dimer precursors. Here, we report the crystallographic characterization of the iridium dimers (PhSO2-F2ArPy)4Ir2Cl2 and (PhSO2-FArPy)4Ir2Cl2 which sheds light on their stereochemistry, as well as on the stereochemistry of the corresponding heteroleptic iridium complexes. The crystal structures were determined by SCXRD. Both complexes crystalize in P space group and have a trans configuration of the arylpyridine ligands. The geometry parameters and the atomic coordination around central Ir3+ ion are similar in both complexes, each one showing a regular octahedral arrangement of the donor atoms.

This chapter discusses the most important synthetic routes to the main classes of electroluminescent -conjugated polymers, highlighting advantages and limitations of the different methods in terms of versatility, stereo- and regioselectivity, efficiency. The discussion covers not only the synthesis of basic classes of polymers such as polyarylenes, poly(arylenevinylene)s, poly(aryleneethynylene)s, but describes routes to systems with more complex structures, including multifunctional copolymers and coordination polymers.

In this article we discuss synthetic routes to organic conjugated oligomers and polymers bearing triple C-C bonds that have been recently developed in our laboratories, based on Pd-catalyzed Csp-Csp2 coupling reactions. Experimental protocols have been tuned to face synthetic challenges such as the presence in the main conjugated backbone of multifunctional substituents or

The title complex, [Ir2(C18H13FNO2S)4Cl2]C7H8, was crystallized from dichloromethane solution under a toluene atmosphere. It is a dimeric complex in which each of the two IrII centres is octahedrally coordinated by two bridging chloride ligands and by two chelating cyclometallated 2-(5-benzylsulfonyl)- 3-fluoro-2-(pyridin-2-yl)phenyl ligands. The crystal structure analysis unequivocally establishes the trans disposition of the two cyclometallated ligands bound to each IrII centre, contrary to our previous hypothesis of a cis disposition. The latter was based on the 1H NMR spectra of a series of dimeric benzylsulfonyl-functionalized dichloride-bridged iridium complexes, including the compound described in the present work [Ragni et al. (2009). Chem. Eur. J. 15, 136–148]. The toluene solvent molecules, embedded in cavities in the crystal structure, are highly disordered and could not be modelled successfully; their contribution was removed from the refinement using the SQUEEZE routine in the program PLATON [Spek (2009). Acta Cryst. D65, 148–155].