Theoretical investigation on photochromic diarylethene: A short review

This paper presents a review of our reported theoretical studies that we performed to identify experimental spectroscopic data (NMR, Raman, IR, and ESR), find applications that utilize transport property (hole and electron), design the environmental field effect around a molecule (polymer and crystal), and to elucidate nonlinear response properties. Moreover, new results on thermal stability and reaction in crystalline state are also included. We put emphasis on how theoretical studies on photochromic systems contributed to an understanding of the experimental data on a molecular level. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.