Systematic comparisons among the
oxazinone, quinazoline, and difluoroboron
series on optical absorption and fluorescence emission properties
have been made. Weaker electron donor–acceptor (D–A)
pairs in both the oxazinone and quinazoline series bring about the
slight red shifts of absorption spectra, whereas they significantly
promote the fluorescence intensities of the oxazinone series but bathochromically
shift the maximum emission wavelengths of the quinazoline series.
Intrinsically, the charge-transfer (CT) modes govern the electron
excitation/de-excitation processes in both the oxazinone and quinazoline
series, but with respective different CT features, i.e., the interfragment
CT mode for the oxazinone series versus the intrafragment CT mode
for the quinazoline series. In the difluoroboron series, Oxa-Cl-OCH3-BF2 undergoes a change of transition mode from the local excitation
to the CT de-excitation, whereas a large variation of CT compositions
can be observed in Qui-Cl-OCH3-BF2. Experimentally, Oxa-Cl-OCH3-BF2 exhibits higher fluorescence quantum yield,
favorable thermo- and photostability, stronger fluorescence intensity,
and appropriately large Stokes shift, whereas theoretically, Qui-Cl-OCH3-BF2 benefiting from both the difluoroboron and
quinazoline moieties is also promising to be a good fluorescent dye.
The motif of combining oxazinone/quinazoline and difluoroboron moieties
is believed to improve the prototypical architectures of oxazinone
and quinazoline dyes.