Optical, electrochemical, third-order nonlinear optical, and excited state dynamics studies of thio-zinc phthalocyanine

Abstract

Zinc phthalocyanine with S-aryl groups at α-positions have been synthesized and its optical, emission, electrochemical and third-order nonlinear optical properties were investigated. Both the Soret and Q-bands were red-shifted and obeyed Beer–Lambert's law. Electrochemical properties indicated that both oxidation and reduction processes were ring centered. Emission spectra were recorded in different solvents and the fluorescence yields obtained were in the range of 0.02 while time-resolved fluorescence data revealed lifetimes of typically few ns. Excited state dynamics in this novel thio-zinc phthalocyanine molecule has been investigated using femtosecond (fs) degenerate pump-probe spectroscopy. Nonlinear optical properties of this molecule have been examined using the Z-scan technique with picosecond (ps) and fs pulses. Both open and closed aperture Z-scan curves were recorded with ~2 ps/~150 fs laser pulses at a wavelength of 800 nm and nonlinear optical coefficients were extracted from both the studies. Degenerate pump-probe data performed at 600 nm suggested a single long lifetime of ~300 ps, possibly originating from the non-radiative decay of S1 state.