Aza-Diarylethenes Undergoing Both Photochemically and Thermally Reversible Electrocyclic Reactions.

Exploring novel molecular photoswitches plays a crucial role in the field of photo-functional materials chemistry. In this study, we synthesized aza-diarylethenes with benzothiophene-S,S-dioxide as a part of the hexatriene structure and investigated their photochromic properties. Unlike previously reported aza-diarylethenes, which exhibit fast thermally reversible photochromism, the compounds synthesized here exhibited pseudo-photochemically reversible photochromism.

Diarylethene Photoswitches Undergoing 6π Azaelectrocyclic Reaction: Disrotatory Thermal Cycloreversion of the Closed-Ring Isomer.

Gaining insight into the dynamics of electrocyclic reactions is very important from both fundamental and application perspectives. In this study, we developed novel diarylethene photoswitches that undergo 6π azaelectrocyclic reaction. We found that they exhibit fast thermally reversible type (T-type) photochromism, in contrast to the fact that common diarylethenes exhibit photochemically reversible type (P-type) photochromism.

Attogram-level light-induced antigen-antibody binding confined in microflow.

The analysis of trace amounts of proteins based on immunoassays and other methods is essential for the early diagnosis of various diseases such as cancer, dementia, and microbial infections. Here, we propose a light-induced acceleration of antigen-antibody reaction of attogram-level proteins at the solid-liquid interface by tuning the laser irradiation area comparable to the microscale confinement geometry for enhancing the collisional probability of target molecules and probe particles with optical force and fluidic pressure. This principle was applied to achieve a 10-fold higher sensitivity and ultrafast specific detection in comparison with conventional protein detection methods (a few hours) by omitting any pretreatment procedures; 47-750 ag of target proteins were detected in 300 nL of sample after 3 minutes of laser irradiation.