Shaping crystals with light: crystal-to-crystal isomerization and photomechanical effect in fluorinated azobenzenes.
Unusually long thermal half-lives of perhalogenated cis-azobenzenes enabled their structural characterization and the first evidence of a crystal-to-crystal cis → trans azobenzene isomerization. Irradiation with visible light transforms a perhalogenated cis-azobenzene single crystal into a polycrystalline aggregate of its trans-isomer in a photomechanical transformation that involves a significant, controllable, and thermally irreversible change of crystal shape. This is the first demonstration of permanent photomechanical modification of crystal shape in an azobenzene.
Department of Chemistry and FRQNT Centre for Self-Assembled Chemical Structures, McGill University, 801 Sherbrooke Street West, H3A 0B8, Montreal, Canada.
Oleksandr S
OS
Bushuyev
Anna
A
Tomberg
Tomislav
T
Friščić
Christopher J
CJ
Barrett