Impact of electronegative character on ultrafast nonlinear optical absorption of azine derivatives

Two azine derivatives (NO(Cl) and NS(Cl)) with different electronegative central core were prepared and spectroscopically characterized. Their ultrafast third-order nonlinear optical (NLO) responses were investigated using open aperture Z-scan and optical limiting method with 190 fs laser pulses at 515 nm. The frontier molecular orbitals and energy gaps of samples were obtained through quantum chemical calculation. Transient absorption spectra demonstrated that the origin of strong NLO absorption of two molecules was attributed to excited-state absorption. A simplified three-energy-level model was used to determine their photo-physical parameters. Our results show that the stronger the electronegative cationic groups is, the stronger the NLO absorption performs. The azine compounds have large excited-state lifetime and large ratio of singlet excited-state absorption cross-section to that of ground state cross-section (∼20.2), indicating it is a candidate material for future ultrafast optical limiters.