0000000000702597
AUTHOR
Eric Vauthey
Ultrafast decay of the excited singlet states of thioxanthone by internal conversion and intersystem crossing.
The experimental ultrafast photophysics of thioxanthone in several aprotic organic solvents at room temperature is presented, measured using femtosecond transient absorption together with high-level ab initio CASPT2 calculations of the singlet- and triplet-state manifolds in the gas phase, including computed state minima and conical intersections, transition energies, oscillator strengths, and spin-orbit coupling terms. The initially populated singlet pi pi* state is shown to decay through internal conversion and intersystem crossing processes via intermediate n pi* singlet and triplet states, respectively. Two easily accessible conical intersections explain the favorable internal conversio…
Photoinduced Electron Transfer in a Porphyrin-Fullerene Dyad at a Liquid Interface
The excited-state properties of an amphiphilic porphyrin–fullerene dyad and of its porphyrin analogue adsorbed at the dodecane/water interface are investigated by using surface second-harmonic generation. Although the porphyrin is formally centrosymmetric, the second-harmonic spectra of both compounds are dominated by the intense Soret band of the porphyrin. Polarization-selective measurements and molecular dynamics simulations suggest an angle of about 45° between the donor–acceptor axis and the interfacial plane, with the porphyrin interacting mostly with the nonpolar phase. Time-resolved measurements reveal a marked concentration dependence of the dynamics of both compounds upon Q-band e…