Heteroacenes based on thiophene have been widely studied in the field of organic functional materials because of their extended conjugation, rigid planarity and their significant potential for applications in electronic devices. Selenophene derivatives with narrow optical band gap, strong intermolecular interactions, and well-aligned solid-state structure shows excellent charge-transport properties. The synthesis access to selenophene-based heteroacenes remains high challenge, because of the generally high reactivity of the C–Se bond and the weak orbital overlap when selenium atom is involved. Recently, six kinds of selenophene-based bull’s horn-shaped heteroacenes have been synthesized, and the crystal structures, spectroscopy features, and cyclic voltammetry behaviors are studied. The study results have been published in J. Org. Chem. (Article, IF = 4.81). Associate Professor Chunli Li and Professor Hua Wang are the corresponding authors of the research. Wan Xu is the first author.

After the synthesis of selenophene helicenes (J. Org. Chem., 2017, 82(20): 11192-11197), a good continuation of the previous work the preparation of selenophene-based bull’s horn-shaped heteroacenes are reported. The current work provides a foundation for the preparation of selenophene derivatives and theirs applications in field of organic functional materials. The study was funded by the National Science Foundation of China (51503056, 21672054, U1304207).