Photonics of zinc(II) and boron(III) chelates with methyl- and phenyl-substituted dipyrromethenes and azadipyrromethenes

A comparative study of spectral, luminescent, and photophysical parameters has been carried out for a series of zinc(II) and boron(III) chelates with dipyrromethene ligands of a similar structure: tetramethyl- and tetraphenylpyrrodimethenes bearing the substituents on the pyrrole rings and tetraphenylazapyromethene. In some cases, the luminescence efficiency of the chelates depends on the excitation wavelength. The replacement of the central atom boron(III) by zinc(II) results in not only a twofold increase in the number of coordinated chromophoric ligands and the absorption coefficient, but also an increase in the contribution of nonradiative processes to excitation energy deactivation and, hence, a decrease in the yield of fluorescence. The efficiency of intersystem crossing is higher in the zinc(II) dipyrromethene complexes than in the corresponding boron-chelated dipyrromethenes (BODIPYs), resulting in the appearance of phosphorescence in frozen solutions. It has been found that the replacement of the meso-spacer in the dipyrromethene ligand by the nitrogen atom not only shifts the absorption and fluorescence band maximums to longer wavelengths, but also decreases the fluorescence efficiency and leads to the appearance of long-lived luminescence even in aza-BODIPY. An analysis of the results has shown that these behavior can be due to involvement of the nπ* (πσ*, σπ*) states localized on the meso-nitrogen in the deactivation of excitation energy.