Amorphous porphyrin glasses exhibit near-infrared excimer luminescence

Abstract

The amorphous nature of a series of zinc-porphyrins bearing two 3,4,5-tri((S)-3,7-dimethyloctyloxy)phenyl groups at the meso-positions, named "porphyrin glass", were tolerant of π-conjugation engineering in ethynylene-linked dimers. The butadiyne-linked dimeric porphyrin glass formed an intermolecular excimer, which exhibited bright and exceptionally long-lived, near-infrared (NIR) luminescence at approximately 970 nm in the solid state. Therefore, porphyrin glasses overcame a general bottleneck for NIR-luminescence, such as an undesired π-stacked aggregation of a large porphyrin plane in addition to the energy gap law. The formation of amorphous molecular glasses from a series of meso-ethynylene-conjugated zinc-porphyrins, named "porphyrin glass", is described. The butadiyne-linked dimeric porphyrin glass formed an intermolecular excimer, which exhibited solid-state, near-infrared (NIR) luminescence at approximately 970 nm.