Superior optical limiting performance of simple metalloporphyrin derivatives

Several simple metalloporphyrins based on 5,10,15,20-tetrakis(p-hexadecyloxyphenyl)-21H,23H-porphine were found to be excellent optical limiters toward nanosecond laser pulses at 532 nm. In particular, the optical limiting performance of the porphyrin derivative with lead as the center metal matches that of currently the best benchmark optical limiter chloroindium tetra(t-butyl)-phthalocyanine. The optical limiting results of the molecules were correlated with their ground- and excited-state parameters in terms of the five-level reverse saturable absorption model.