Metal-containing Oligo(phenylenethynylene)s: Syntheses and Nonlinear Optical Properties

Oligo(p-phenyleneethynylene)s (OPEs) have been of considerable interest in recent years. Introduction of ligated metal units into an OPE structure can add a new dimension: the resultant transition metal OPE complexes can potentially possess a number of useful properties such as luminescence, reversible redox chemistry and accessible mixed valence states. Such complexes have been examined for molecular electronics and liquid crystal applications, but physical properties of series of systematically-varied metal-terminated OPEs are yet to be explored. We report here syntheses of a series of metal-terminated OPEs (up to a hepta(phenyleneethynylene)), and examples with phenylenevinylene segments, the evolution of linear optical properties in metal-containing OPEs and hybrid OPE/OPVs (oligo(phenylenevinylene)s) upon chain lengthening, and a wavelength-dependence study of the cubic nonlinear optical (NLO) properties of metal-containing OPEs by fs Z-scan measurements.