Regiospecific N-heteroarylation of amidines for full-color-tunable boron difluoride dyes with mechanochromic luminescence

Colors to dye for: Palladium-catalyzed regiospecific N-heteroarylations of amidines with 2-halo-N-heteroarenes leads to a structurally diverse library of BF2 /amidine-based complexes. These dyes not only present full-visible-color solid-state emissions with large Stokes shifts and high fluorescence quantum yields, but also exhibit a full-color-tunable mechanofluorochromic nature.