New photochromic diarylethenes bearing a condensed aromatics moiety

A new class of diarylethenes based on a hybrid structure of naphthalene and thiophene have been developed and their properties including photochromism, fatigue resistance, and fluorescence have been investigated. The condensed aromatic naphthalene was connected directly to the central cyclopentene ring as an aryl moiety and available to participate in the photoinduced cyclization reaction. All of these compounds have exhibited good photochromism, notable fatigue resistance, and obvious fluorescence photo-switches in both solution and polymer matrix. Nevertheless, significantly different properties have been observed among these diarylethenes, which may be attributed to the effect of different substituent groups. Compared with the analogs bearing other six-membered aryl unit, the naphthalene moiety is more conducive, which leads to higher molar absorption coefficient and blue shift of the absorption maximum.