The effect of metal ions on the photophysical and photochemical property of phenylthio bromo metal phthalocyanines

Abstract

Phthalocyanines have attracted great attention because of their applications in material science including electro-optical devices, electrochromic display, and photodynamic therapy (PDT) of cancer. In addition, the Pcs exhibit great flexibility of chemical structure modification enabled by either peripheral substituents or metal ions co-ordination to central cavity of highly conjugated tetrapyrrolic macrocycles. However, because of the hydrophobic nature of the phthalocyanine ring, Pcs have strong tendency to aggregate in solution, which limited their applications. To overcome this problem, the introduction of dendritic wedge to peripheral positions of phthalocyanines can prevent the formation of aggregation to some extent. The preparation procedure involved the modification of the zinc (II) and magnesium (II) phthalocyanines with peripherally dendritic substitutions. The photophysical and photochemical properties of dendritic phthalocyanines were studied by UV/Vis and fluorescence spectroscopic methods. Compared with the magnesium (II) phthalocyanine, the intensity of Q band of zinc (II) phthalocyanine was increased but no obviously position changes was observed. Furthermore, the zinc (II) phthalocyanine exhibited relatively higher fluorescence intensity than the magnesium (II) phthalocyanine. The fluorescence quantum yield and lifetimes of magnesium (II) phthalocyanine was clearly longer than that of zinc (II) phthalocyanine. As the better photosensitizer, the zinc (II) phthalocyanine has higher singlet oxygen quantum yield owning superior performance. This results indicated that the singlet oxygen quantum yield would be effected by the nature of metal ions.