Experimental and computational studies of novel ferrocene-pyranylidene dyads: Synthesis, characterization and electrochemical and linear optical properties

A series of mono-condensed ferrocene-pyranylidene dyads in the form of donor-spacer-acceptor hybrid have been synthesized and characterized using H-1 NMR, C-13 NMR, Fourier transform infrared and mass spectroscopies and CHN analysis. The electrochemical and photochemical properties of these compounds were studied using UV-visible spectroscopy and cyclic voltammetry. A quantum chemistry study of the synthesized compounds was performed with the density functional theory approach. The studies show that the band gap of this class of compounds can be tuned by changing the acceptor group or the length of the conjugate spacer. Considering all the results obtained, ferrocene has a good performance, as good as or even better than that of bulky aryl amines as donor groups in these systems.