Abstract
We combine ultrafast electronic and vibrational spectroscopy and computational modeling to investigate the photoinduced excited-state intramolecular hydrogen-transfer dynamics in 1,8-dihydroxy-9,10-anthraquinone (DHAQ) in tetrachloroethene, acetonitrile, dimethyl sulfoxide, and methanol. We analyze the electronic excited states of DHAQ with various possible hydrogen-bonding schemes and provide a general description of the electronic excited-state dynamics based on a systematic analysis of femtosecond UV/vis and UV/IR pump-probe spectroscopic data. Upon photoabsorption at 400 nm, the S 2 electronic excited state is initially populated, followed by a rapid equilibration within 150 fs through population transfer to the S 1 state where DHAQ exhibits ESIHT dynamics. In this equilibration process, the excited-state population is distributed between the 9,10-quinone (S2) and 1,10-quinone (S1) states while undergoing vibrational energy redistribution, vibrational cooling, and solvation dynamics on the 0.1-50 ps time scale. Transient UV/vis pump-probe data in methanol also suggest additional relaxation dynamics on the subnanosecond time scale, which we tentatively ascribe to hydrogen bond dynamics of DHAQ with the protic solvent, affecting the equilibrium population dynamics within the S2 and S1 electronic excited states. Ultimately, the two excited singlet states decay with a solvent-dependent time constant ranging from 139 to 210 ps. The concomitant electronic ground-state recovery is, however, only partial because a large fraction of the population relaxes to the first triplet state. From the similarity of the time scales involved, we conjecture that the solvent plays a crucial role in breaking the intramolecular hydrogen bond of DHAQ during the S2/S1 relaxation to either the ground or triplet state. © 2014 American Chemical Society.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3090-3099 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | The Journal of Physical Chemistry A |
| Volume | 118 |
| Issue number | 17 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 17 2014 |
Bibliographical note
KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01Acknowledgements: V.S.B. acknowledges financial support by the National Science Foundation (Grant CHE 0911520) and supercomputer time from NERSC and from the High Performance Computing facilities at Yale University. We thank Dr. Alexey Gusev for allowing access to his facilities at Ultrafast Systems LLC, 1748 Independence Blvd. Bld. G, Sarasota, FL 34234, U.S.A. We also thank Dr. Allen Ricks for his help and support during conducting the time-resolved data.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physical and Theoretical Chemistry