Central to the development of optoelectronic devices is the availability of efficient synthetic molecular photoswitches, the design of which is an arena where the evolving concept of excited-state aromaticity (ESA) is yet to make a big impact. The aim of this minireview is to illustrate the potential of this concept to become a key tool for the future design of photoswitches. The paper starts with a discussion of challenges facing the use of photoswitches for applications and continues with an account of how the ESA concept has progressed since its inception. Then, following some brief remarks on computational modeling of photoswitches and ESA, the paper describes two different approaches to improve the quantum yields and response times of switches driven by E/Z photoisomerization or photoinduced H-atom/proton transfer reactions through simple ESA considerations. It is our hope that these approaches, verified by quantum chemical calculations and molecular dynamics simulations, will help stimulate the application of the ESA concept as a general tool for designing more efficient photoswitches and other functional molecules used in optoelectronic devices.

中文翻译：

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激发态芳香性辅助的分子光开关。

光电器件开发的核心是高效合成分子光电开关的可用性，其设计是一个舞台，激发态芳香性（ESA）的发展概念尚未产生重大影响。这次迷你审查的目的是说明这种概念有可能成为未来光电开关设计的关键工具。本文首先讨论了在应用中使用光电开关所面临的挑战，并继续介绍了自ESA概念诞生以来如何发展。然后，在简要谈谈光电开关和ESA的计算模型时，本文介绍了两种不同的方法，可以通过简单的ESA考虑来提高E / Z光异构化或光诱导的H原子/质子转移反应驱动的开关的量子产率和响应时间。我们希望通过量子化学计算和分子动力学模拟验证的这些方法将有助于刺激ESA概念作为设计更有效的光电开关和光电器件中使用的其他功能分子的通用工具的应用。