Photophysical Properties and Electronic Structure of Stable, Tunable Synthetic Bacteriochlorins: Extending the Features of Native Photosynthetic Pigments

Bacteriochlorins, which are tetrapyrrole macrocycles with two reduced pyrrole rings, are Nature’s near-infrared (NIR) absorbers (700–900 nm). The strong absorption in the NIR region renders bacteriochlorins excellent candidates for a variety of applications including solar light harvesting, flow cytometry, molecular imaging, and photodynamic therapy. Natural bacteriochlorins are inherently unstable due to oxidative conversion to the chlorin (one reduced pyrrole ring) or the porphyrin. The natural pigments are also only modestly amenable to synthetic manipulation, owing to a nearly full complement of substituents on the macrocycle. Recently, a new synthetic methodology has afforded access to stable synthetic bacteriochlorins wherein a wide variety of substituents can be appended to the macrocycle at preselected locations. Herein, the spectroscopic and photophysical properties of 33 synthetic bacteriochlorins are investigated. The NIR absorption bands of the chromophores range from ∼700 to ∼820 nm; the lifetimes of the lowest excited singlet state range from ∼2 to ∼6 ns; the fluorescence quantum yields range from ∼0.05 to ∼0.25; and the yield of the lowest triplet excited state is ∼0.5. The spectroscopic/photophysical studies of the bacteriochlorins are accompanied by density functional theory (DFT) calculations that probe the characteristics of the frontier molecular orbitals. The DFT calculations indicate that the impact of substituents on the spectral properties of the molecules derives primarily from effects on the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital. Collectively, the studies show how the palette of synthetic bacteriochlorins extends the properties of the native photosynthetic pigments (bacteriochlorophylls). The studies have also elucidated design principles for tuning the spectral and photophysical characteristics as required for a wide variety of photochemical applications.