Abstract
Chichibabin's hydrocarbon and viologens are among the most famous diradicaloids and organic redox systems, respectively. However, each has its own disadvantages: the instability of the former and its charged species, and the closed-shell nature of the neutral species derived from the latter, respectively. Herein, we report that terminal borylation and central distortion of 4,4'-bipyridine allow us to readily isolate the first bis-BN-based analogues (1 and 2) of Chichibabin's hydrocarbon with three stable redox states and tunable ground states. Electrochemically, both compounds exhibit two reversible oxidation processes with wide redox ranges. One- and two-electron chemical oxidations of 1 afford the crystalline radical cation 1˙(+) and dication 1(2+), respectively. Moreover, the ground states of 1 and 2 are tunable with 1 as a closed-shell singlet and the tetramethyl-substituted 2 as an open-shell singlet, the latter of which could be thermally excited to its triplet state because of the small singlet-triplet gap.