Comparative Study of Excited State Dipole Moment of Coumarin Laser Dyes: Solvent and Substituent Effect

In the present work, an array of novel substituted 2H-chromen-2-one (coumarin derivatives abbreviated as C-337, C-480, C-540A) has been subjected to photophysical analysis. Although the influence of the electron donating groups such as amino, substituted amino, hydroxyl, alkoxy groups at position 7 of the coumarin ring system has been extensively studied, However, coumarin moieties with substituent at position 3 have not been explored much. Attempt is made to explain the effect of electron donating and electron accepting substituent on excited state and ground state dipole moment. The ground state (μ) and excited state (μ) dipole moment of C-337, C-480, C-540A coumarins are estimated from solvatochromic shift of absorption and fluorescence spectra as a function of the dielectric constant and refractive index using Bakhshiev and Kwaski-Chamma Vialletequ. μ and μ for all the reported coumarin are also calculated using Reichardt correlation method. The small angle is also reported between the ground and excited state dipole moment suggesting that they are almost parallel to each other. Excited state dipole moment is observed larger than ground state dipole moment for all the coumarins studied indicating substantial π-electron density redistribution.