Conjugated iminopyridine based Azo dye derivatives with efficient charge transfer for third order nonlinearities

The third order nonlinearities of two azobenzene-iminopyridine molecular systems have been investigated employing the Z-scan technique at 532 nm, 30 ps. The objective of the work has been to study and to compare the nonlinearity of two iminopyridine based ligands substituted with one (NO2AzoIminoPy, A) and two azobenzene units ((NO2Azo)2IminoPy, B). The ligand B exhibits an extended conjugated structure and higher charge transfer within the molecule. Our results show high dependence of the nonlinearity on both the conjugation length within the molecule and on the number of the electron accepting units.