ABAB Homoleptic Bis(phthalocyaninato)lutetium(III) Complex: Toward the Real Octupolar Cube and Giant Quadratic Hyperpolarizability

The concept of octupolar molecules has considerably enlarged the engineering of second-order nonlinear optical materials by giving access to 2D and 3D architectures. However, if the archetype of octupolar symmetry is a cube with alternating donor and acceptor groups at the corners, no translation of this ideal structure into a real molecule has been realized to date. This may be achieved by designing a bis­(phthalocyaninato)­lutetium­(III) double-decker complex with a crosswise ABAB phthalocyanine bearing alternating electron-donor and electron-acceptor groups. In this communication, we present the first step toward this goal with the synthesis, crystal structure determination, and measurement of the molecular first-order hyperpolarizability β by harmonic light diffusion, of an original lutetium­(III) sandwich complex displaying the required ABAB-type alternation for one face of the cube. This structure is characterized by an intense absorption in the near-IR due to an intervalence transition and exhibits the highest quadratic hyperpolarizability ever reported for an octupolar molecule, ⟨βHLS2⟩1907 = 5750 × 10^–30 esu.