Highly stable and fluorescent switching spirooxazines

Two novel photochromic spirooxazines, SO-NA1 and SO-NA2, containing a naphthalimide unit were synthesized. The imide group of naphthalimide unit is incorporated at the naphthoxazine fragment, thus giving strong electron-withdrawing effect favoring the long-lived merocyanine (MC) in the dark giving good colorability in solution. Remarkably, their open merocyanine (MC) forms exhibit significantly long lifetimes, almost three magnitudes longer than that of unsubstituted spironaphthoxazine (1). Moreover, the fluorescence of naphthalimide unit can be switched on and off by photoinduced conversion between the open and closed forms.