Syntheses, third-order optical nonlinearity and DFT studies on benzoylferrocene derivatives

Abstract

A series of benzoylferrocene derivatives were synthesized and their third-order nonlinear optical (NLO) properties were evaluated in N,N-dimethyl-formamide at 800 nm using femtosecond degenerate four-wave mixing. The third-order NLO susceptibilities of synthesized compounds were 3.065–7.859 × 10−13 esu, with the response times in 49–70 fs. The second-order hyperpolarizabilities of the molecules of the compounds were 1.018–2.611 × 10−31 esu. The Density Functional Theory was used to calculate these benzoylferrocene derivatives. The theoretical study showed that the third-order NLO properties were increased with the increasing electron-withdrawing ability, which is accordance with the decreasing energy gap between the highest occupied and the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital. With the increasing of electron-withdrawing ability, the transferred charge to the substituent was increased and the affection on the electronic reallocate was increased. The experiment and theoretical results showed that the benzoylferrocene derivatives had potential nonlinear optical applications.