Solid-state fluorescence emission and second-order nonlinear optical properties of coumarin-based fluorophores.

Some coumarin-based fluorophores were synthesized and characterized by elemental analysis, (1)H NMR, (13)C NMR and MS. The solid-state photoluminescence properties were studied. The benzocoumarins display interesting solid-state emission properties with an emission at wavelengths ranging from 532 to 645 nm, when excited by a 325 nm helium-cadmium laser at room temperature. The results demonstrated that the luminescent colors can be tuned from green to red by simply varying molecular structure. The benzocoumarin-phenyl boronic acid hybrid, 4-(3-oxo-3-(2 -oxo-2H-1-naphtho[2,1-b]pyran-3-yl)-prop-1-enyl)phenyl boronic acid, showed obvious fluorescence response to water. Whereas the free compound was very weakly fluorescent in tetrahydrofuran (THF), the addition of water leads to an appearance of strong blue-green fluorescence and a dramatic increase of emission intensity. Besides, 3-(3-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl)-prop-2-enoyl)-2H-1-benzopyran-2-one exhibited second order nonlinear optical response to laser pulses. A noticeable second harmonic generation (SHG) under pulsed excitation at 1064 nm was observed. Preliminary nonlinear measurements on powder samples showed that the second harmonic generation efficiency is roughly 5.8 times that of potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP).