Efficient Synthesis and Photochromic Properties of a New Diarylethene Bearing a Condensed Aromatics Moiety

摘要

A new class of diarylethenes based on a hybrid structure of thiophene and naphthalene has been developed and its properties including photochromism, kinetics and fluorescence were investigated in detail. The results showed that the compound exhibited obvious photochromism, changing from colorless to red after irradiation with 297 nm UV light both in solution and in PMMA film. The kinetic experiments indicated that the cyclization/cycloreversion process of the compound was determined to be the zeroth/first order reaction in hexane solution. At last, the results demonstrated that the diarylethene compound had attractive properties for potential application in optical storage.