"Nucleophilic Addition to 1-Chloro-5-(4-Dimethylamino)pyridiniumanthraquinione."

Previous members of the Koch research group have synthesized and characterized several novel compounds capable of accepting electrons. Of special interest is a class of compounds known as anthraquinones. Several different compounds generated by substituting the chlorines of various chlorinated anthraquinones with pyridinium groups have yielded several promising materials that maybe useful in the process of converting sunlight into usable energy.

Of these, 1-chloro-5-(4-dimethlyamino)-pyridiniumanthraquionone possesses properties that make it particularly useful. Specifically, it is capable of accepting two electrons well before irreversible reduction of the pyridinium moiety is observed. Unfortunately, it has not yet been shown that the remaining chlorine on this compound can be replaced with anything other than another pyridinium group. It is the goalof this project to replace this group with another nucleophile. This should increase the synthetic usefulness of the compound by providing a means to link it to other compounds or further tune its properties.