Giant Fluorescence Modulation Induced by UV–vis Excitation of Benzothiadiazole Nanoparticles Doped with Diarylethene Derivatives

Abstract

We prepared aqueous nanoparticle colloids of benzothiadiazole doped with diarylethene derivatives, and succeeded in demonstrating that they showed the ON/OFF fluorescence photoswitching with a giant modulation of the fluorescence intensity at a low density level of photo-colored closed-form isomer of the diarylethene. The fluorescence intensity decreased non-linearly with the photoconversion of the isomer from open-form to closed-form. The fluorescence quenching behavior was unrelated to the concentration of composed diarylethene chromophore (5 to 35 mol%) in the nanoparticles.