Tailoring the optical and dynamic properties of iminothioindoxyl photoswitches through acidochromism
Miroslav Medveď, Mark W. H. Hoorens, Mariangela Di Donato, Adèle D. Laurent, Jiayun Fan, Maria Letizia Taddei, Michiel Hilbers, Ben L. Feringa, Wybren Jan Buma, Wiktor Szymański
Abstract
isomer. Since the former is thermally stable, while the latter re-isomerizes on a millisecond time scale, we are able to modulate the half-life of ITIs over three orders of magnitude by shifting this equilibrium. Finally, stable bidirectional switching of protonated ITI with green and red light is demonstrated with a half-life in the range of tens of seconds. Altogether, we designed a new type of multi-responsive molecular switch in which protonation red-shifts the activation wavelength by over 100 nm and enables efficient tuning of the half-life in the millisecond-second range.