Polycrystalline aromatic hydrocarbon

Perhaps the simplest optically controlled switches are single molecules embedded in a solid host matrix. These systems consist of an amorphous, polycrystalline, or crystalline film doped with dilute concentrations of impurity molecules. The most commonly used dopant molecules are fused polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and porphyrins. In addition to facile sample preparation, these planar molecules absorb in the visible to near IR regions of the spectrum, possess large extinction coefficients in both the ground and excited states, and have high fluorescence quantum yields. 

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