Syntheses, structures and third-order non-linear optical properties of homometal clusters containing molybdenum

Both the homometal cluster [P(ph4)]2[Mo2O2(μ-S)2(S2)2] (1) and [Mo2O2(μ-S)2(Et2dtc)2] (2) (Et2dtc=diethyl-dithiocarbamate) were successfully synthesized by low-temperature solid-state reactions. X-ray single-crystal diffraction studies suggest that compound (1) is a dinuclear anion cluster, and compound (2) is a dinuclear neutral cluster. The two compounds were characterized by elemental analyses, IR spectra and UV-Vis spectra. The third-order non-linear optical (NLO) properties of the clusters were also investigated and all exhibited nice non-linear absorption and self-defocusing performance with moduli of the hyperpolarizabilities 5.145×10−30 esu for (1) and 5.428×10−30 esu for (2).