Quadratic nonlinearity of one- and two-electron oxidized metalloporphyrins and their switching in solution

We report the quadratic nonlinearity of one- and two-electron oxidation products of the first series of transition metal complexes of meso-tetraphenylporphyrin (TPP). Among many MTPP complexes, only CuTPP and ZnTPP show reversible oxidation/reduction cycles as seen from cyclic voltammetry experiments. While centrosymmetric neutral metalloporphyrins have zero first hyperpolarizability, beta, as expected, the cation radicals and dications of CuTPP and ZnTPP have very high beta values. The one- and two-electron oxidation of the MTPPs leads to symmetry-breaking of the metal-porphyrin core, resulting in a large beta value that is perhaps aided in part by contributions from the two-photon resonance enhancement. The calculated static first hyperpolarizabilities, beta0, which are evaluated in the framework of density functional theory by a coupled perturbed Hartree-Fock method, support the experimental trend. The switching of optical nonlinearity has been achieved between the neutral and the one-electron oxidation products but not between the one- and the two-electron oxidation products since dications that are electrochemically reversible are unstable due to the formation of stable isoporphyrins in the presence of nucleophiles such as halides.