Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.138, No.15, 5052-5062, 2016
Oxazines: A New Class of Second-Order Nonlinear Optical Switches
A combined experimental theoretical investigation has revealed that oxazine-based compounds are multiaddressable; multistate, and multifunctional molecular switches exhibiting contrasts of both linear and second-order nonlinear optical properties. The switching properties are particularly large when the substituent is a donor group. In this study, the cleavage of the C-O bond at the junction of the indole and oxazine cycles (of the closed a forms) is acido-triggered, leading to an Open form (b(+)) characterized by larger first hyper-polarizablliries (beta(HRS)) and smaller excitation energies than in the closed form. These results are confirmed and interpreted utilizing ab initio calculations that have been carried out on a broad set of compounds to unravel the role of the substituent. With respect to acceptor groups,, oxazines bearing donor groups are characterized not only by larger beta(HRS) and beta(HRS) contrast ratios but also by smaller excitation energies, larger opening-induced charge transfer, and reduction of the bond length alternation, as well as smaller Gibbs energies of the opening reaction. Compared to protonated' open forms (b(+)), calculations on the zwitterionic open forms (b) have pointed out Similarities in the low-wavelength UV/vis absorption spectra, whereas their films beta(HRS) values might differ strongly as a function of the substituent. Indeed, the open forms present two NLOphores, the indoleninium-substituent entity and the nitrophenol (present in the protonated open form, b(+)) or nitrophenolate (present in the zwitterionic open form, b) moiety. Then, nitrophenolate displays a larger first hyperpolarizability than nitrophenol and the beta tensor of the two entities might reinforce or cancel each other.