Long-living structures of photochromic salicylaldehyde azine: polarity and viscosity effects from nanoseconds to hours

Abstract

In this study, we report on the effects of solvent viscosity and polarity on the photochromic salicylaldehyde azine (SAA) molecule by examining the steady-state and UV-visible absorption results in the time scale from nanoseconds to hours, in solution and in a polymer film. For the neutral structure, the viscosity strongly affects the lifetime of the photochromic (trans-keto) tautomer by suppressing the second order quenching process, and thus increasing the photochrome lifetimes in highly viscous solvents to 500 μs in polar triacetine, and to 65 μs in non-polar squalane. Trapping SAA in a non-polar polymer film (polyethylene) results in further elongation of the photochromic lifetime (700 μs) by one order of magnitude (with respect to that in squalane), due to the retardation of the intramolecular back-isomerization. Another species, living significantly longer and absorbing more in the UV comparing to the photochrome, was identified as the syn-enol tautomer. The lifetime of this tautomer, created in a competitive mechanism to the photochrome creation, is much longer in non-polar solvents (hundreds of minutes) than in polar ones (tens of minutes), opposite to the trend observed for the photochrome. For the SAA anion, the transient living on the ns–μs time scale can be exclusively assigned to the triplet state, which is not observed for the neutral form at room temperature.