Oxidation of Tetraphenyl­hexaaza­anthracene: Accessing a Scissor Dimer of a 16π Biscyanine

Tetraphenylhexaazaanthracene (TPHA), a fluorescent zwitterionic biscyanine with a closed-shell singlet ground state, on treatment with manganese dioxide or phenyliodine bis­(trifluoroacetate) (PIFA), undergoes oxidative dimerization to give a near-zero dipole scissor 5,5′-dimer DI-TPHA. Both acene components of the new dimer DI-TPHA maintain their biscyanine closed-shell singlet ground state motifs, as judged by analysis of both single crystal X-ray crystallographic and density functional theory computational studies; however, unlike TPHA, DI-TPHA is only very weakly fluorescent.