journal article·2017-04

Temporal mapping of photochemical reactions and molecular excited states with carbon specificity

K. Wang, P. Murahari, K. Yokoyama, J. S. Lord, F. L. Pratt, J. He, L. Schulz, M. Willis, J. E. Anthony, N. A. Morley, L. Nuccio, A. Misquitta, D. J. Dunstan, K. Shimomura, I. Watanabe, S. Zhang, P. Heathcote, A. J. Drew

Nature Materials· Volume 16· Issue 4
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Abstract

Photochemical reactions are essential to a large number of important industrial and biological processes. A method for monitoring photochemical reaction kinetics and the dynamics of molecular excitations with spatial resolution within the active molecule would allow a rigorous exploration of the pathway and mechanism of photophysical and photochemical processes. Here we demonstrate that laser-excited muon pump-probe spin spectroscopy (photo-μSR) can temporally and spatially map these processes with a spatial resolution at the single-carbon level in a molecule with a pentacene backbone. The observed time-dependent light-induced changes of an avoided level crossing resonance demonstrate that the photochemical reactivity of a specific carbon atom is modified as a result of the presence of the excited state wavefunction. This demonstrates the sensitivity and potential of this technique in probing molecular excitations and photochemistry.
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Research context

OpenAlex topics: Luminescence and Fluorescent Materials · Organic Light-Emitting Diodes Research · Molecular Junctions and Nanostructures

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

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