Synthesis and photophysics of some novel imidazole derivatives used as sensitive fluorescent chemisensors

Abstract

Some novel imidazole derivatives were developed for highly sensitive chemisensors for transition metal ions. Since these compounds are sensitive to different external stimulations such as UV irradiation, heat, increasing pressure and changing the environmental pH causing colour change and so they can be used as a 'multi-way' optically switchable material. A prominent fluorescence enhancement was found in the presence of transition metal ions such as Hg(2+), Pb(2+) and Cu(2+) and this was suggested to result from the suppression of radiationless transitions from the n-π* state in the chemisensors. The existence of C-H….O intramolecular hydrogen bonding in dmphnpi is confirmed by the Natural Bond Orbital analysis (NBO). The Mulliken, NBO charge analysis and the HOMO-LUMO energies were also calculated. The electric dipole moment (μ) and the first-hyperpolarisability (β) value of the investigated molecules have been studied both experimentally and theoretically which reveal that the synthesized molecules have microscopic non-linear optical (NLO) behaviour with non-zero values. Ground and excited state DFT calculation were carried out in order to find out dipole moment and energy.