Efficiently tuning the absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy of the novel branched p-nitro-stilbene derivatives with chemical strategy.

Suitable chemical strategy is a useful approach on the tuning color and photoluminescence of organic dyes. This paper presented tuning novel branched p-nitro-stilbene derivatives efficiently with a new chemical strategy through variation of chemical bridged bond. Linking bonds played significant effects on the absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy of the branched p-nitro-stilbene derivatives. A change from "D-pi-A" to "A-pi-A" chemical structural characteristics occurred for the branched p-nitro-stilbene derivatives as ester bond was attached. This led to not only large hypsochromic shift of the maximal absorption wavelength of the branched p-nitro-stilbene derivatives, but considerable reduction of the fluorescence intensity. While in contrast, the branched p-nitro-stilbene derivatives with ether bond exhibited longer wavelength absorption and much stronger fluorescence emission in modest polar solvent. The cyclic voltammograms of these branched p-nitro-stilbene derivatives were determined. Different electrochemistry processes were observed for the branched p-nitro-stilbene derivatives with various linking bonds. The energies of frontier orbital of the branched p-nitro-stilbene derivatives were estimated from their corresponding redox potentials. Molecular geometry optimization of the branched p-nitro-stilbene derivatives was performed, and the electron density distribution of frontier orbital was analyzed. Thermal stabilities of these branched nitro-stilbene derivatives were investigated via the analysis of the differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermograving (TGA) curves. This paper presented strong evidences that the absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy of the branched stilbene derivatives could be mediated efficiently by chemical strategy.