Two-dimensional two-photon absorbing chromophores and solvent effects on their cross-sections

A series of 2-dimensional two-photon absorbing chromophores and their 1-dimensional analogs were studied. The influence of the solvents on the linear absorption, photoluminescence and two-photon absorption cross-sections were also examined for these chromophores. The stoke's shift increase with increasing solvent polarity, that can be adequately described by Lippert equation. Two-photon absorption cross sections were measured with femtosecond pulses by the two-photon-induced fluorescence technique. It was observed that two-photon cross-sections were also strongly dependent on the solvents, however no simple correlation with solvent polarity was found in this study. Interestingly, a linear relationship was observed in these chromophores between the molar extinction coefficient and the two-photon cross section when plotted in log-log formats. Understanding of the relationship may provide a better insight of the two-photon absorption processes, and potentially will contribute to the design of highly efficient two-photon absorbing chromophores.