All‐Optical Switching and Two‐States Light‐Controlled Coherent‐Incoherent Random Lasing in a Thiophene‐Based Donor‐Acceptor System

• Published in: Chemphyschem Vol. 19; no. 13; pp. 1605 - 1616
• Main Authors: Szukalski, Adam, Ayadi, Awatef, Haupa, Karolina, El‐Ghayoury, Abdelkrim, Sahraoui, Bouchta, Mysliwiec, Jaroslaw
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Weinheim Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 05-07-2018; Wiley-VCH Verlag
• Subjects: Absorption spectra; Birefringence; Charge transfer; Chemical Sciences; Derivatives; Information technology; Lasing; Light amplifiers; Molecular chains; nonlinear optics; Optical properties; optical switches; Optical switching; photoinduced birefringence; Physics; random lasing; Switches; thiophene derivatives
• ISSN: 1439-4235; 1439-7641
• DOI: 10.1002/cphc.201800136

We describe herein the synthesis and characterization of a thiophene‐based donor‐acceptor system, namely (E)‐2‐(4‐nitrostyryl)‐5‐phenylthiophene (Th‐pNO2), which was prepared under Horner‐Wadsworth‐Emmons conditions. The UV/Vis absorption bands, including the intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) band, were fully assigned using DFT and TD‐DFT computations. The results of both efficient third‐order nonlinear optical properties and light‐amplification phenomena are presented. Investigations of photoinduced birefringence (PIB) in optical Kerr effect (OKE) experiments showed a great potential for this particular compound as an efficient, fully reversible, and fast optical switch. Time constants for the observed trans‐cis‐trans molecular transitions are in the range of microseconds and give a competitive experimental result for the well‐known and exploited azobenzene derivatives. Random lasing (RL) investigations confirmed that this organic system is potentially useful to achieve strong light enhancement, observed as a multimode lasing action. Both RL and OKE measurements indicate that this material is a representative of thiophene derivatives, which can be utilized to fabricate fast all‐optical switches or random lasers (light amplifiers).
A thiophene derivative, synthesized through the Horner‐Wadsworth‐Emmons (HWE) reaction, has been fully characterized in this study. The material exhibits efficient third‐order nonlinear optical properties and an attractive light‐amplification behavior. Photoinduced birefringence investigations suggest that it could be used as an efficient, fully reversible and fast optical switch.