Tetradentate Carbene-Anilido Boron Complexes: Highly Fluorescent Dyes with Larger Stokes Shifts than BODIPY Analogues

A new class of carbene-anilido boron complexes have been designed and synthesized. The complexes show intense fluorescence with large Stokes shift because of their charge-transfer excited states, different from typical BODIPY dyes. By using a chiral 1,1'-bi(2-naphthol) ligand, dyes exhibiting circularly polarized luminescence can also be facilely developed.