Optical, Electrochemical, Third-Order Nonlinear Optical Investigations of 3,4,5-Trimethoxy Phenyl Substituted Non-Aqueous Phthalocyanines

A new series of non-aqueous phthalocyanines having 3,4,5-trimethoxy phenyl group at peripheral positions in which the central cavity possessing Cu(II), Zn(II), and without metals has been synthesized, and its absorption, fluorescence (steady-state and excited state lifetimes), electrochemical, and third-order nonlinear optical (NLO) properties were evaluated. Absorption studies data suggest that all three phthalocyanines obey Beer-Lambert's law, and the redox properties indicate that both oxidation and reduction reactions are macrocyclic centered. The singlet quantum yields were measured in different solvents and were found to be in the range of 0.2-0.5 in the case of free-base, whereas it was in the range of 0.1-0.5 in zinc derivative, while the time-resolved fluorescence data revealed lifetimes of typically a few ns. The third-order NLO properties were investigated using the Z-scan technique with kilohertz (for retrieving true electronic nonlinearities) and megahertz repetition rate femtosecond pulses at 800 nm. Intensity-dependent Z-scan studies revealed robust NLO coefficients for solutions and thin films (two-photon absorption cross-sections of 9,300-57,000 GM) of these molecules suggesting a strong potential for optical switching, imaging, and optical limiting applications.

Symmetrical phthalocyanine bearing four triptycene moieties: Synthesis, photophysical and singlet oxygen generation

Novel metal-free (7) and zinc(II) (8) phthalocyanine derivatives bearing four substituted triptycene moieties were synthesized and fully characterized by various spectroscopic methods including 1H-NMR, 13C-NMR, mass, FT-IR and UV-vis. Photophysical and photochemical properties such as electronic absorption, fluorescence emission, fluorescence lifetimes and singlet oxygen generation were investigated in toluene. The UV-vis spectra of 7 and 8 exhibited absorption bands in the visible region. The fluorescence lifetimes of 7 and 8 phthalocyanines were found to be 6.2 and 3.6 ns, respectively. The ability of the examined zinc(II) (8) and metal-free (7) to produce the singlet oxygen has been determined by both chemical and direct methods. While the chemical method 1,3-diphenylisobenzofuran (DPBF) as a singlet oxygen quencher was used in the first method, the direct determination has been done by recording the weak emission band of the singlet oxygen in the near-infrared region (1270 nm). From the direct process, the quantum yields of the singlet oxygen were found to be 0.28 (for 7) and 0.60 (for 8) and similar values were also obtained by the chemical method. The fluorescence quenching behavior of the studied phthalocyanine compounds (8 and 7) by electron-accepting 1,4 benzoquinone (BQ) was also studied in toluene. The powerful nanosecond laser flash photolysis technique was also employed to record the transient absorption spectra of the long-lived triplet states of the investigated compounds.

Synthesis, characterization, photophysicochemical properties and theoretical study of novel zinc phthalocyanine containing four tetrathia macrocycles

In this work, Zn(II) phthalocyanine derivative (TTU-Pc) bearing 13-membered tetrathia macrocycles was synthesized, and the novel Zn(II) phthalocyanine derivative was fully characterized by elemental analysis and general spectroscopic methods such as MALDI-TOF mass, FT-IR, UV-vis and [Formula: see text]H-NMR. The synthesized phthalocyanine derivative has quite limited solubility in most of the common organic solvents. Fluorescence measurement was conducted for this Zn(II)phthalocyanine to estimate its fluorescence quantum yields. The singlet oxygen generation ability was also examined to investigate its photosensitizer properties. General trends were described for quantum yields of fluorescence, photodegradation and singlet oxygen quantum yields of this compound. The electrochemical properties of the molecule were investigated by cyclic voltammetry (CV) and square wave voltammetry (SWV). In addition, the lowest energy structure, the electronic structure and frontier molecular orbitals were calculated in DFT and the excitation spectrum was obtained by TDDFT calculations. We found that our computational and experimental results were in agreement.