Quinacridone
Encyclopedia
Quinacridone is a red powder. It is an organic compound
Organic compound
An organic compound is any member of a large class of gaseous, liquid, or solid chemical compounds whose molecules contain carbon. For historical reasons discussed below, a few types of carbon-containing compounds such as carbides, carbonates, simple oxides of carbon, and cyanides, as well as the...

 with the molecular formula C20H12N2O2. It is used as a pigment; analogs bearing this motif are known as quinacridones.

Quinacridones

Quinacridones are a family of synthetic pigment
Pigment
A pigment is a material that changes the color of reflected or transmitted light as the result of wavelength-selective absorption. This physical process differs from fluorescence, phosphorescence, and other forms of luminescence, in which a material emits light.Many materials selectively absorb...

s used to make high performance paints. Quinacridones are considered "high performance" pigments because they have exceptional color and weather fastness. Major uses for quinacridones include automobile coatings as well as other industrial coatings. They can also be used in artist's paints, including oils, acrylics, and watercolors.

Typically deep red to violet in color, the hue of quinacridone is affected not only by the R-groups on the molecule but by the crystal form of the solid. For example, the γ crystal modification of unsubstituted quinacridone provides a strong red shade that has excellent color fastness and resistance to solvation. Another important modification is the β phase which provides a maroon shade that is also more weather resistant and light-fast. Both crystal modifications are more thermodynamically stable
Thermodynamics
Thermodynamics is a physical science that studies the effects on material bodies, and on radiation in regions of space, of transfer of heat and of work done on or by the bodies or radiation...

 than the α crystal phase.

Basic modifications to the chemical structure of quinacridones include the addition of CH3 and Cl substituents.

Some magenta shades of quinacridone are labeled under the proprietary name "Thio Violet" and "Acra Violet".

Semiconductor

Quinacridone can form a self-assembling
Self-assembly
Self-assembly is a term used to describe processes in which a disordered system of pre-existing components forms an organized structure or pattern as a consequence of specific, local interactions among the components themselves, without external direction...

, supramolecular organic semiconductor
Organic semiconductor
An organic semiconductor is an organic material with semiconductor properties. Single molecules, short chain and organic polymers can be semiconductive. Semiconducting small molecules include the polycyclic aromatic compounds pentacene, anthracene, and rubrene...

. The following image, taken by a scanning tunneling microscope
Scanning tunneling microscope
A scanning tunneling microscope is an instrument for imaging surfaces at the atomic level. Its development in 1981 earned its inventors, Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer , the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1986. For an STM, good resolution is considered to be 0.1 nm lateral resolution and...

, shows these self-assembled quinacridone chains on a graphite background.
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