A facile iterative procedure for the preparation of dendrimers containing luminescent cores and stilbene dendrons

A simple two-step convergent iterative procedure has been developed for the preparation of stilbene dendrons containing an aldehyde at the center which can be coupled in a single step to give dendrimers that contain luminescent chromophores. The stilbene units in the dendrons are linked in a meta arrangement at the branching phenyl units allowing them to be treated, to a first approximation, as isolated chromophores. All the dendrimers are luminescent with emission observed from the core. The cores prepared were distyrylbenzene, distyrylanthracene, and meso-tetraphenylporphyrin which photoluminesce blue, yellow-green, and red, respectively. We found that all the dendrimers, independent of generation or core, could be spin-coated from solution to form good quality thin films, which shows that the processing conditions have been disengaged from the electronic properties in this series of materials.