Directional Construction of New Nonlinear Optical Bifunctional Units through Molecular Engineering Design Inspired by the BO-Typed Configuration.

Studies on new functional structural units with both large hyperpolarizability and high anisotropy are essentially important for finding high-performance nonlinear optical (NLO) materials and enriching the material systems. Under the guidance of the "structure-analogue" strategy, the work utilizes the molecular engineering approach to direct the construction of target units, BCNO and B(CN) units. The BCNO unit with a highly analogous structure to the BO group and its derivate B(CN) unit with a configuration of BO group are designed as NLO-active units. Furthermore, two compounds with these new NLO-active units, BCNH(OH)·HO () and B(CNH)(NO) (), are synthesized, successfully. These compounds exhibit excellent properties with second-harmonic generation (SHG) responses ranging from 0.5 to 5.9 times that of KDP and large birefringence (Δ = 0.181 @ 546.1 nm and Δ = 0.148 @ 546.1 nm). Theoretical calculations prove that the BCNO and B(CN) units make great contributions to the SHG effects and birefringence, which confirms that the BCNO and B(CN) units are novel NLO bifunctional units and could be excellent fundamental building blocks to construct amounts of novel NLO and birefringence crystals. Our studies would enlighten the research studies on biguanide complexes of boron.