Document Type

Article

Disciplines

1.4 CHEMICAL SCIENCES

Publication Details

https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2023/sc/d3sc02681g

DOI: 10.1039/D3SC02681G

Abstract

Diazocines are bridged azobenzenes with phenyl rings connected by a CH2–CH2 group. Despite this rather small structural difference, diazocine exhibits improved properties over azobenzene as a photoswitch and most importantly, its Z configuration is more stable than the E isomer. Herein, we reveal yet another unique feature of this emerging class of photoswitches. In striking contrast to azobenzenes and other photochromes, diazocine can be selectively switched in E / Z direction and most intriguingly from its thermodynamically stable Z to metastable E isomer upon successive excitation of two different triplet sensitizers present in solution at the same time. This approach leads to extraordinary large redshift of excitation wavelengths to perform isomerization i.e. from 400 nm blue to 530 nm green light (Z / E) and from 530 nm green to 740 nm far-red one (E / Z), which falls in the near-infrared window in biological tissue. Therefore, this work opens up of potential avenues for utilizing diazocines for example in photopharmacology, smart materials, light energy harvesting/storage devices, and out-of-equilibrium systems.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1039/D3SC02681G

Funder

Academy of Finland (Grant No. 316893 and PREIN Flagship programme no. 320165) and the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator Grant Project PADRE, decision number 101001016

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

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