Photo- and Electrochromic Behavior of Dinuclear Iron and Ruthenium Complexes with Dithienylethene Ligand

摘要

Combination of organometallic fragments with chromic molecules would lead to development of stimuli-responsive systems, which show the functions unique to the attached metal species (e.g., redox properties, catalysis) upon stimuli application. From this viewpoint, we previously reported a photochromic dithienylethene (DTE) with the redox-active Fe* fragments connected with the C≡C linkers, 4 Fe*-≡-DTE-≡-Fe* (Fe*= (η~5-C5Me5)Fe(dppe)), which turned out to serve as a photoswitchable molecular wire. Herein we report DTE derivatives with the directly σ-bonded, redox-active organometallic attachments M-DTE-M (1-3), which exhibit (i) chromic behavior triggered by electrochemical as well as photochemical stimuli and (ii) remarkable switching performance much superior to that of 4 (Figure 1).