Recent progress in open-shell organic conjugated materials and their aggregated states

In the last few decades, open-shell organic materials have attracted great attention from scientists due to their new chemical and physical properties, as well as their possible applications in new-generation organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), organic field effect transistors (OFETs), organic spintronics and photonics, and so on. In this review, we summarize the recent progress in the design and synthesis of open-shell organic conjugated materials. First, we give a general summary of synthetic strategies towards these stable open-shell species, such as kinetic steric protections, spin delocalization by large pi-conjugated skeletons and heteroatom-assisted protections. In particular, we will focus on their aggregated states in OFETs, organic conductors, luminescent devices and photoinduced radical materials, with the aim to provide some clue for the further development of novel open-shell organic conjugated materials.