Optical Limiting Properties of 3,5-Dithienylenevinylene BODIPY Dyes at 532 nm

Jessica Harris; Lizhi Gai; Gugu Kubheka; John Mack; Tebello Nyokong; Zhen Shen

doi:10.1002/chem.201702503

Optical Limiting Properties of 3,5-Dithienylenevinylene BODIPY Dyes at 532 nm

Chemistry. 2017 Oct 17;23(58):14507-14514. doi: 10.1002/chem.201702503. Epub 2017 Sep 14.

Authors

Jessica Harris¹, Lizhi Gai², Gugu Kubheka¹, John Mack¹, Tebello Nyokong¹, Zhen Shen²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, 6410, South Africa.
² State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry, Nanjing National Laboratory of Microstructures, Nanjing University; Nanjing 210023 (P.R. China).

PMID: 28805263
DOI: 10.1002/chem.201702503

Abstract

The optical limiting properties of a series of near infrared absorbing 3,5-dithienylenevinylene BODIPY (boron-dipyrromethene) dyes (1-3) that contain donor and acceptor moieties in their π-conjugation systems were studied by using the z-scan technique at 532 nm in the nanosecond pulse range. A strong reverse saturable absorption response was observed when the compounds are embedded into poly(bisphenol carbonate A) polymer thin films, which demonstrates that BODIPY dyes with this type of structure are suitable for use in optical limiting applications.

Keywords: BODIPYs; dyes/pigments; nonlinear optics; optical limiting; z-scan.