General Design Strategy of Anti-aromatic Porphyrinoids

A systematic investigation to arrange the typical anti-aromatic porphyrinoids in sequence was performed. Based on density functional theory calculations, six rules are summarized to obtain the high-performance anti-aromatic porphyrinoids: (1) when two atoms are deleted/added on the 18 pi electron current ring flowing pipe, we will immediately obtain a 16 pi/20 pi electron anti-aromatic system; (2) it is a good idea to increase the number of pyrrole/thiophen/furan units on the pi-electron current ring flowing pipe; (3) the heteroatom selecting order is -O- (optimal choice), -NH- (second choice), and -S- (last choice); (4) it is worth noting that the C-C=C-C unit is not beneficial for the anti-aromatic properties; (5) it is very significant to avoid the crowded environment in the core space of an anti-aromatic molecule. In this view, -O- is much better than -S- and -NH-; (6) the "circular" skeleton is much better than an "ellipse-like", "rectangular", or "parallelogram-like" one.