Design and Synthesis of a Caged Carboxylic Acid with a Donor-π-Donor Coumarin Structure: One-photon and Two-photon Uncaging Reactions Using Visible and Near-Infrared Lights

A caged carboxylic acid with a novel two-photon (TP)-responsive donor-pi-donor coumarin backbone with a quadrupolar nature was designed and synthesized in this study. The newly synthesized coumarin derivative showed a strong one-photon (OP) absorption band (epsilon approximate to 29000 cm(-1) M-1) in the visible region (>similar to 400 nm). Time-dependent density functional theory calculations predicted a sizable TP absorption cross-section with a maximum at similar to 650 nm significantly lager than that related to the OP absorption band. This is confirmed experimentally using TP excited fluorescence in the fs regime that leads to TP absorption cross-section of 18 and 5.6 GM at 680 and 760 nm, respectively. The OP photolysis (400 nm) and near-infrared-TP photolysis (750 nm) of the caged benzoic acid resulted in a clean formation of benzoic acid and an aldehyde.