ABSTRACT
Experimental and theoretical foundations for femtosecond time-resolved circular dichroism (TRCD) spectroscopy of excitonic systems are presented. In this method, the system is pumped with linearly polarized light and the signal is defined as the difference between the transient absorption spectrum probed with left and with right circularly polarized light. We present a new experimental setup with a polarization grating as key element to generate circularly polarized pulses. Herein the positive (negative) first order of the diffracted light is left-(right-)circularly polarized and serves as a probe pulse in a TRCD experiment. The grating is capable of transferring ultrashort broadband pulses ranging from 470 nm to 720 nm into two separate beams with opposite ellipticity. By applying a specific chopping scheme we can switch between left and right circular polarizations and detect transient absorption (TA) and TRCD spectra on a shot-to-shot basis simultaneously. We perform experiments on a squaraine polymer, investigating excitonic dynamics, and we develop a general theory for TRCD experiments of excitonically coupled systems that we then apply to describe the experimental data in this particular example. At a magic angle of 54.7° between the pump-pulse polarization and the propagation direction of the probe pulse, the TRCD and TA signals become particularly simple to analyze, since the orientational average over random orientations of complexes factorizes into that of the interaction with the pump and the probe pulse, and the intrinsic electric quadrupole contributions to the TRCD signal average to zero for isotropic samples. Application of exciton theory to linear absorption and to linear circular dichroism spectra of squaraine polymers reveals the presence of two fractions of polymer conformations, a dominant helical conformation with close interpigment distances that are suggested to lead to short-range contributions to site energy shifts and excitonic couplings of the squaraine molecules, and a fraction of unfolded random coils. Theory demonstrates that TRCD spectra of selectively excited helices can resolve state populations that are practically invisible in TA spectroscopy due to the small dipole strength of these states. A qualitative interpretation of TRCD and TA spectra in the spectral window investigated experimentally is offered. The 1 ps time component found in these spectra is related to the slow part of exciton relaxation obtained between states of the helix in the low-energy half of the exciton manifold. The dominant 140 ps time constant reflects the decay of excited states to the electronic ground state.
ABSTRACT
Carbon chains with an odd number of C atoms are reactive intermediates with a high biradical character. Here we report a joint experimental and computational investigation of the dynamics of diphenylpropynylidene, C6H5-C3-C6H5, in dichloromethane and ethanol. The biradical is generated by ultraviolet light from 1,3-diphenyldiazopropyne. Electron paramagnetic resonance spectra are recorded to elucidate the spin multiplicity and geometry of the biradical. In both solvents a triplet ground state at 4 K is verified. Transient absorption spectra provide insight into the fate of the biradical. A study in deaerated dichloromethane permits us to follow the photophysics of diphenylpropynylidene and to extract time constants for its vibrational as well as electronic relaxation. In the presence of oxygen, a more complex photochemistry is observed that permits us to derive a model for the reaction of the biradical with O2. In ethanol, the spectra recorded in the presence and absence of O2 are very similar, which can be explained by the similarity of the chromophores of the reaction products.
ABSTRACT
Trihalide anions are linear molecules that can be photodissociated with ultraviolet (UV) light. Whereas deep-UV excitation leads to three-body dissociation, for near-UV excitation just one molecular bond is cleaved, which notionally opens up the possibility for different fragmentation patterns. Here, we explore whether the dihalide fragment is formed as an anionic or neutral species and whether heteronuclear trihalides can lead to two different dihalides. The analysis is based on pronounced wavepacket dynamics induced by femtosecond UV pulses and associated both with the initial trihalide and the nascent dihalide species. For the trihalide anions I3-, Br3-, IBr2-, and ICl2- (point group D∞h), as well as for I2Br- and I2Cl- (point group C∞v) in dichloromethane solution, we identify dihalide fragments by their characteristic vibrational wavenumbers, which we achieve from globally fitting the vibrational wavepacket oscillations, considering a wavelength-dependent phase. No signature from neutral species is found right after excitation, hence there is only one diatomic product in D∞h trihalides. For the investigated C∞v trihalides, which could allow a homonuclear and a heteronuclear product, only the homonuclear one is observed. Since dihalide anions are unstable intermediates, their absorption and the ground-state bleach of the trihalide anion show a biexponential recovery for all samples due to recombining fragment pairs. The rate of the electron transfer yielding a neutral dihalogen and an atomic anion, a prerequisite for the recombination, gives rise to the biexponential behavior; fast recombination is mediated by vibrational excess energy, while slow recombination occurs for cooled-down dihalogens. These data reveal the fragmentation and recombination dynamics from a time-domain approach rather than frequency-domain vibrational spectroscopy and contribute to the in-depth comprehension of these versatile model molecules.
