Metal Alkynyl Dendrimers with Switchable NLO Properties

摘要

Dipolar organic nonlinear optical (NLO) materials suffer from a nonlinearity – optical transparency trade-off, coupled to a proclivity to pack centrosymmetrically via antiparallel dipole alignment, both of which mitigate against their use. NLO materials with a dendritic construction may have large nonlinearities, coupled to favorable transparency and processing characteristics, so have been the subject of considerable interest. Inserting ligated metal units into a dendrimer at specifically designed sites is of interest because the metal may imbue the dendritic material with optical, electronic, magnetic, catalytic, and other properties, and, of particular relevance to the present studies, may influence NLO properties. We report herein our recent work examining the NLO merit of arylalkynylruthenium-containing dendrimers, and employing the reversible redox nature of these compounds to accomplish facile switching of optical nonlinearities.