Long-lifetime reverse saturable absorption in a bipyridyl platinum(II) complex bearing naphthalimidylethynyl-substituted fluorenylacetylide ligands

By fitting femtosecond transient difference absorption time series at multiple wavelengths, the singlet excited-state lifetime of a particular platinum(II) 2,2'-bipyridyl complex bearing naphthalimidylethynyl-substituted fluorenyl-acetylide ligands was determined to be 83.5 +/- 39 ps in toluene solution. A triplet quantum yield of 0.06 was measured using relative actinometry. Excited-state absorption cross sections of 5.6 x 10(-17) cm(2) (singlet) and 7.8 x 10(-16) cm(2) (triplet) at 532 nm were obtained by using a five-level dynamic model to fit open-aperture Z scans at picosecond and nanosecond pulse widths and a variety of pulse energies. Most significantly, fits of nanosecond transient difference absorption decay data yield a value of 16.3 ps for the triplet excited-state lifetime of the complex in deoxygenated toluene solution, longer by a factor of almost 20 than the lifetime of the analogous complex with benzothiazolyl-substituted ligands. Published by Elsevier B.V.