Table 3.

Photophysical properties of the photoactivatable DCDHF in Scheme 1 and other photoswitchable fluorophores.^[a]

	λabs [nm]	λfl [nm]	εmax [m−1 cm−1]	ΦF	ΦP[b]	ΦB in gelatin	Ntot,e in gelatin
1a	424	552	29100	n/a	good (0.0059)	n/a	n/a
1b	570	613	54100	0.025−0.39	n/a	4.1 × 10−6	2.3 × 106
Dronpa[c]	503	518	95000	0.85	very good	∼ 3.2 × 10−5	–
PA-GFP[d]	504	517	17400	0.79	moderate	∼ 6.9 × 10−5	∼ 140,000
EYFP[e]	514	527	84000	0.61	moderate	5.5 × 10−5	∼ 140,000
Cy3/Cy5[f]	647	662	200000	0.18	very good	–	∼ 670,000
PC-RhB[g]	552	580	110000	0.65	moderate	–	∼ 600,000

^[a]Values for 1a and 1b reported in ethanol unless otherwise stated. In the other systems, we calculated estimations from available information (see discussion in the supporting material of reference [23]).

^[b]Quantum yield of photoconversion; for the DCDHF system, from azide with 407 nm illumination. Quantitative values for other systems have not been reported, so we include qualitative comparisons.

^[c]Aqueous photophysical values for the reversibly photoswitchable GFP called Dronpa from refs. [57] and [67].

^[d]Aqueous and in-cell photophysical values for the irreversibly photoswitchable GFP called PA-GFP as reported in refs. [25,56], and [68].

^[e]Photophysical values, as reported in refs. [25,55,68], and [69].

^[f]Aqueous photophysical values of a Cy3/Cy5 dimer on hybridized DNA, as reported in refs. [58] and [68].

^[g]Photophysical values of a photoswitchable rhodamine B embedded in a poly(vinyl alcohol) film, as reported in ref. [59]; the range of N_tot,e values is for rhodamine 6G in water from ref. [70] and tetramethyl rhodamine in lipid membranes from ref. [68].