Singlet Excited-State Interactions in Naphthalene-Thymine Dyads

Two thymidine-derived nucleosides 1 and 2 were prepared by attaching a chiral naphthalene to the positions 5′ and 3′ of the sugar. The resulting dyads, which contain key substructures present in drugs and nucleic acids, exhibit different spatial arrangements (transoid or cisoid) of the fluorophore relative to the thymine unit. Emission measurements on these compounds in the presence of ROH molecules revealed a remarkable intramolecular fluorescence quenching for dyad 1. The obtained results are consistent with quenching of the singlet excited state of 1 by hydrogen-bond donor solvents. Thus, a physical deactivation process (vibronically induced internal conversion) would be the pathway resp…