Photochromic coordination complexes are relatively rare in comparison to the organic compounds listed above. There are two major classes of photochromic coordination compounds. Those based on sodium nitroprusside and the ruthenium sulfoxide compounds. The ruthenium sulfoxide complexes were created and developed by Rack and coworkers. The mode of action is an excited state isomerization of a sulfoxide ligand on a ruthenium polypyridine fragment from S to O or O to S. The difference in bonding from between Ru and S or O leads to the dramatic color change and change in Ru(III/II) reduction potential. The ground state is always S-bonded and the metastable state is always O-bonded. Typically, absorption maxima changes of nearly 100 nm are observed. The metastable states (O-bonded isomers) of this class often revert thermally to their respective ground states (S-bonded isomers), although a number of examples exhibit two-color reversible photochromism. Ultrafast spectroscopy of these compounds has revealed exceptionally fast isomerization lifetimes ranging from 1.5 nanoseconds to 48 picoseconds.
