Syntheses and properties of salts of chromophores with ferrocenyl electron donor groups and quaternary nitrogen acceptors

A series of five new dipolar cations has been synthesized with ferrocenyl (Fc) electron donor groups connected to N-arylpyridinium, N-methylquinolinium, N-methylbenzothiazolium, or N-methylacridinium acceptors. Together with their known N-methylpyridinium analogue, these chromophores have been characterized as their PF6− salts by using various techniques including electronic absorption spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry. Nine single-crystal X-ray structures have been determined, including two polymorphs of one salt obtained from a single crystallization experiment, and two of these are polar materials. A highly favorable degree of dipolar alignment for bulk NLO effects is observed in one case. Molecular quadratic nonlinear optical (NLO) responses have been determined by using femtosecond hyper-Rayleigh scattering (HRS) at 1300 nm and also via Stark (electroabsorption) spectroscopic studies on the intense π → π* intraligand and d → π* metal-to-ligand charge-transfer bands. A broad correlation between the ...