Description:
Background
Donor–acceptor Stenhouse adducts (DASAs) have become valuable photoresponsive materials due to their modular donor, acceptor, and triene components that tune a variety of properties. This attribute is critical for integrating photoswitches into complex devices and biological environments for applications in targeted drug delivery and photonic materials.
Technology Description
USC researchers have designed a new class of photoresponsive compounds that incorporate heteroatoms which can enable overcoming energetic barriers that historically prevented ring opening in related heterocycles. This expanded design supports red-shifted absorption profiles, faster or slower thermal recovery tailored to the application, and more efficient open-to-open conversion under low-intensity light. The synthesis maintains modularity across donor and acceptor compartments, enabling multi-variable tuning for material, biological, and device integration.
Benefits
- Tunable photoisomerization via heteroatom modulation
- Access to absorption profiles shifted across the visible and near-IR spectrum.
- Photoswitches with structural handles for control of thermal reversion rates and dark-state equilibria.
- Expanded chemical diversity in DASAs, increasing design flexibility for materials integration.
Stage of Development
Fully characterized photoswitches
- Drug-delivery
- Photonic information storage and logic systems
- Photoswitchable probes and sensors
Publications