Highly fluorescent contrast for rewritable optical storage based on photochromic bisthienylethene-bridged naphthalimide dimer

A napthalimide dimer tethered by a photochromic bisthienylethene bridge with very high contrast fluorescence switching was synthesized by Suzuki coupling method. It exhibited good photoregulating luminescence with very high contrast in poly(methyl methacrylate) doped films. The strong fluorescence emission with high-contrast switching in solid films can solve the long existing problem resulted from low fluorescence contrast in readout of the stored information. The dimer has high-contrast photoswitchable fluorescence features and the inherent characteristics of pristine bisthienylethene, BTE-NA, which make it a promising material for erasable optical data storage.