The chemical and photophysical properties of metal dithiolene compounds have been studied since the 1960’s due to the noninnocent nature of the dithiolene ligands and their rich, reversible electrochemistry. This class of materials have been utilized as biomimetic catalysts, sensitizers for solar energy conversion, laser dyes, and non-linear optical materials thanks in part due to their large photostability. We synthesized a series of nickel (II) and gold (III) dithiolenes with different functional groups in the para positions of the benzene rings to study the structure-property relationships in comparison to those that are commercially available. We will present spectroelectrochemistry data, femtosecond transient difference absorption spectra, and Z-scans in an effort to quantify the ground and excited-state photophysical properties of these compounds.
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