From Stable Radicals to Thermally Robust High-Spin Diradicals and Triradicals

Stable radicals and thermally robust high-spin di- and triradicals have emerged as important organic materials due to their promising applications in diverse fields. New fundamental properties, such as SOMO/HOMO inversion of orbital energies, are explored for the design of new stable radicals, including highly luminescent ones with good photostability. A relation with the singlet–triplet energy gap in the corresponding diradicals is proposed. Thermally robust high-spin di- and triradicals, with energy gaps that are comparable to or greater than a thermal energy at room temperature, are more challenging to synthesize but more rewarding. We summarize a number of high-spin di- and triradicals, based on nitronyl nitroxides that provide a relation between the experimental pairwise exchange coupling constant J/k in the high-spin species vs experimental hyperfine coupling constants in the corresponding monoradicals. This relation allows us to identify outliers, which may correspond to radicals where J/k is not measured with sufficient accuracy. Double helical high-spin diradicals, in which spin density is delocalized over the chiral π-system, have been barely explored, with the sole example of such high-spin diradical possessing alternant π-system with Kekulé resonance form. Finally, we discuss a high-spin diradical with electrical conductivity and derivatives of triangulene diradicals.