Synthesis, Characterization, Fluorescence Properties, and DFT Modeling of Difluoroboron Biindolediketonates

oleh: Angelo Maspero, Federico Vavassori, Luca Nardo, Guglielmo Vesco, Jenny G. Vitillo, Andrea Penoni

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2023-06-01

Deskripsi

We report a simple and efficient strategy to enhance the fluorescence of biocompatible biindole diketonates (bdks) in the visible spectrum through difluoroboronation (BF<sub>2</sub>bdks complexes). Emission spectroscopy testifies an increase in the fluorescence quantum yields from a few percent to as much as >0.7. This massive increment is essentially independent of substitutions at the indole (-H, -Cl, and -OCH<sub>3</sub>) and corresponds to a significant stabilization of the excited state with respect to non-radiative decay mechanisms: the non-radiative decay rates are reduced by as much as an order of magnitude, from 10<sup>9</sup> s<sup>−1</sup> to 10<sup>8</sup> s<sup>−1</sup>, upon difluoroboronation. The stabilization of the excited state is large enough to enable sizeable <sup>1</sup>O<sub>2</sub> photosensitized production. Different time-dependent (TD) density functional theory (DFT) methods were assessed in their ability to model the electronic properties of the compounds, with TD-B3LYP-D3 providing the most accurate excitation energies. The calculations associate the first active optical transition in both the bdks and BF<sub>2</sub>bdks electronic spectra to the <i>S</i><sub>0</sub> → <i>S</i><sub>1</sub> transition, corresponding to a shift in the electronic density from the indoles to the oxygens or the O-BF<sub>2</sub>-O unit, respectively.