N,N-Diphenyl Dihydrophenazines: Using π-Extension to Access Dicationic Multifunctional Materials.

Dihydrophenazines are receiving increasing attention due to applications in numerous fields of chemistry, from light emission to organo-photocatalysis. Despite this growing interest and numerous works involving the preparation of radical cations based on this scaffold, the isolation and study of the aromatic dications obtained by 2 electron oxidation of dihydrophenazines is still mostly unexplored. From this point of view, along with the substitution at the N atoms generally used to tune dihydrophenazine properties, the π-extension of the phenazine core could play a crucial role in making dicationic states accessible. This could result in an extension of the knowledge on these elusive dications and in potentially highly interesting applications ranging from material science to molecular actuators.