NLO phoric Triphenylamine Derived Donor‐ π ‐Acceptor‐ π ‐Donor Based Colorants: Synthesis, Spectroscopic, Density Functional Theory and Z‐scan Studies

Three Donor‐ π ‐Acceptor‐ π ‐Donor type styryl dyes ( 5a‐c ) with different secondary donors are synthesized and characterized to study their nonlinear and linear optical properties. The structure–property relationships of the dyes are described in the light of systematic photophysical and theoretical investigations. The photophysical characteristics of 5a‐c are influenced by the polarity of the medium, with an appreciable bathochromic shift in emission ( 5b = 81 nm) and large Stoke shifts ( 5b = 104–173 nm) in polar solvents. 5a‐c showed intramolecular charge transfer characteristics recognized with the help of emission solvatochromism, solvent polarity graphs, natural bond orbital analysis and HOMO – LUMO energy difference. The optimized geometry and frontier molecular orbitals reveal that the electron donation takes place from secondary donors and not from a fixed donor (triphenylamine) which is more twisted. The nonlinear optical properties obtained using solvent induced spectral shift and computational methods are found within the limiting values. Z‐scan results reveal saturable kind of behavior for 5a , 5b and 5c , whereas 5a and 5b show reverse saturable kind of behavior in acetone and ethanol and hence give optical limiting values. The two‐photon absorption cross section described by two‐level approximation is highest for 5b (251–300 GM ).