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While the photophysics of closed-shell organic molecules is well established, much less is known about open-shell systems containing interacting radical pairs. In this work, we investigate the ultrafast excited state dynamics of a singlet verdazyl diradical system in solution using transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy for the first time. Following 510 nm excitation of the excitonic S0 → S1 transition, we detected TA signals in the 530–950 nm region from the S1 population that decayed exponentially within a few picoseconds to form a vibrationally hot S0* population via internal conversion. The dependence of the S1 decay rate on solvent and radical–radical distance revealed that the excited state possesses charge-transfer character and likely accesses the S0 state via torsional motion. The ultrafast internal conversion decay mechanism at play in our open-shell verdazyl diradicals is in stark contrast with other closed-shell, carbonyl-containing organic chromophores, which exhibit ultrafast intersystem crossing to produce long-lived triplet states as the major S1 decay pathway.
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Capturing Ring Opening in Photoexcited Enolic Acetylacetone upon Hydrogen Bond Dissociation by Ultrafast Electron Diffraction
Photoinduced biological and chemical reactions are often based on key structural transformations of a molecule driven across multiple electronic states. Acetylacetone (AcAc) is a prototypical system for complex chemical pathways involving several conical intersections (CI) and singlet−triplet intersystem crossings (ISC) characterized by distinct geometries. In the gas phase, AcAc is predominantly in a planar ring-like enolic form stabilized by a strong intramolecular O−H···O hydrogen bond. Following excitation into the S2 (ππ*) state at 266 nm, acetylacetone undergoes rapid internal conversion followed by intersystem crossing. Such relaxation pathways are associated with structural changes including ring opening, deplanarization, and bond elongation. In this work, ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) at the SLAC MeV-UED setup is employed as a direct structural probe with a time resolution of 160 fs. Together with trajectory surface hopping simulations, analysis of the UED data provides a new perspective on the early time nuclear dynamics in acetylacetone. Specifically, AcAc is observed to undergo ring opening, deplanarization, and bond elongation all within the first 700 fs after photoexcitation. The monitored dynamics is associated mainly with the nuclear motion on the S1 potential energy surface, formed after very rapid transfer from S2 to S1, allowing AcAc to reach the conical intersection to intersystem crossing. Such time scales of nuclear motion are contrasted with the time scales of electronic transitions in AcAc that were previously characterized with spectroscopic methods, specifically internal conversion (<100 fs) and intersystem crossing (∼1.5 ps).
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- PAR ID:
- 10650475
- Author(s) / Creator(s):
- ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; more »
- Publisher / Repository:
- American Chemical Society
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 20
- ISSN:
- 1948-7185
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 5068 to 5075
- Subject(s) / Keyword(s):
- X-ray, ultrafast, acetyl acetone
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.5c00285
