Evaluation of Through‐Space Electronic Coupling in the Cofacially Aligned π‐Stacked Organic Mixed‐Valence System

Abstract

A new π‐stacked compound, 1,8‐bis(2′,5′‐dimethoxy‐4′‐methyl‐[1,1′‐biphenyl]‐4‐yl)naphthalene (1) has been synthesized and characterized as a precursor molecule of monocationic mixed‐valence system (MVS). Cyclic and differential pulse voltammograms reveal that the ΔE°ox value between two sequential oxidation potentials is 163 mV. The three‐dimensional geometries of 1, 1•+, and 12+ were obtained via using density functional theory (DFT) calculations with a range‐separated hybrid functional and dispersion corrections (LC‐wPBE‐D3). Two dimethoxytoluene redox centers were aligned in parallel with van der Waals interplanar distances (3.50–3.70 Å). The electronic coupling in this MVS was evaluated by two different approaches: (1) Mulliken–Hush analysis of intervalence charge transfer (IVCT) band obtained from the spectroelectrochemical method, and (2) partial charge distribution analysis of quinonoidal distortion of D•+/D centers obtained from theoretical DFT calculations. The H12 were 2055 and 1903 cm−1 by (1) and (2), respectively. This work suggests that the pure through‐space electronic coupling can be large when two aromatic redox centers are properly aligned.