Toward an Enhancement of the Photoactivity of Multiphotochromic Dimers Using Plasmon Resonance: A Theoretical Study.
Building dimers of organic photochromic compounds paves the way to multifunctional switches, but such architectures often undergo partial photoreactivity only. Combining photochromism of molecules and plasmon resonance of gold nanoparticles (NPs) is known to affect the photochromism of monomers, yet the impact on multimers remains unknown. Here we propose a theoretical study of dimers of dithienylethenes by the mean of a hybrid calculation scheme (discrete-interaction model/quantum mechanics). We aim to assess how the optical properties of multiphotochromes are tuned by the influence of the plasmon resonances. We show that, for a typical chemisorption orientation on the NP, the absorption bands responsible for the photochromism are significantly enhanced for both the doubly open and mixed closed-open isomers of the dyad, hinting that plasmon resonance could be used to boost the generally poor photoactivity of dithienylethene dyads.
†Chimie Et Interdisciplinarité, Synthèse, Analyse, Modélisation (CEISAM), UMR CNRS no. 6230, BP 92208, Université de Nantes, 2, Rue de la Houssinière, 44322 Nantes, Cedex 3, France.
Arnaud
A
Fihey
‡Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes, UMR 6226 CNRS-Université de Rennes 1, 263 Avenue du Général Leclerc, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France.
Boris
B
Le Guennic
†Chimie Et Interdisciplinarité, Synthèse, Analyse, Modélisation (CEISAM), UMR CNRS no. 6230, BP 92208, Université de Nantes, 2, Rue de la Houssinière, 44322 Nantes, Cedex 3, France.|§Institut Universitaire de France, 103, Boulevard Saint-Michel, F-75005 Paris Cedex 05, France.
Denis
D
Jacquemin
TD-DFT; electrodynamics; molecular excitation; multiphotochromism; nanoparticle; plasmonics