Publication highlight · 2025
Our 2025 paper with Anna Sobolewska and colleagues combines spectroscopy, kinetic measurements and ab initio calculations to examine the photochromism of a methoxy-substituted nitrospiropyran. UV light opens the spiropyran ring, producing a coloured merocyanine that subsequently returns to the closed form through a thermal reaction.
The solvent changes this return reaction. Increasing polarity slows ring closure because the merocyanine is stabilized more strongly than the transition state; calculations reproduce the experimentally observed trend in activation energies.
The study connects the excited-state ring-opening pathway with the solvent dependence of thermal relaxation, two aspects that must be considered together when interpreting the optical response of these molecules.
Publication
A. Sobolewska, R. W. Góra, M. Kozak, E. Wojaczyńska, G. Strzelec, H. Jarczewska, M. Daszkiewicz and S. Bartkiewicz. Combined experimental and theoretical insights into the solvent-dependent photochromic properties of nitrospiropyrans. Scientific Reports, 2025, 15, 45347.
Published online: 25 November 2025. Read the paper (DOI: 10.1038/s41598-025-29654-3)
Related research: Photochemistry and photophysics.