Tailoring of the self-assembled structures and optical waveguide behaviour of arylaminofluorenone derivatives

In this work, the fluorenone molecule was symmetrically difunctionalised in the 3,6-positions with four different arylamine moieties. Using slow evaporation, the four fluorenone derivatives (FO1-4) exhibit good ability to arrange into microstructures in the solid state. The electronic and steric effects of arylamine substituents influence both optical features and aggregation processes, as evidenced by photophysical and XRD characterization. SEM investigations have shown that the four FO1-4 derivatives arrange in four different microstructures. More specifically, the self-assembled 1D microribbon - shaped structure of FO1 exhibited an excellent optical loss coefficient (alpha) as low as 0.006 dB mu m(-1), suggesting a potential use of these materials in the field of optical waveguide.