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- Wolf, T. J. A., et al.
(författare)
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Probing molecular photoinduced dynamics by ultrafast soft x-rays
- 2017
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Ingår i: 2017 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC). 25-29 June 2017, Munich, Germany. - : IEEE. - 9781509067367 - 9781509067374
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Summary form only given. Molecules selectively transform light energy from the sun into other forms of energy like heat, electricity, or chemical energy with high quantum efficiency. The energy conversion process is the result of a correlated motion of electrons and nuclei after photoexcitation, often under breakdown of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation. The element and site selectivity of x-rays allows observing molecular processes from a different point of view compared to ultrafast optical probes [1,2]. I will concentrate on time resolved x-ray absorption spectroscopy. The method provides high selectivity on the transient electronic structure of a molecule. Recently, we establishes this method in the soft x-ray domain for probing ππ* to nπ* transitions, a general and important process for molecular energy conversion. Fig. 1 shows a sketch of thymine, used in the experiment, with one of the oxygen 1s core orbitals and the π,n and π* valence orbitals. While valence orbitals are generally delocalized over the whole molecular body, the lone pair n orbital is essentially an oxygen 2p orbital. An x-ray induced transition from the oxygen 1s to the n orbital will result in a strong absorption maximum in the pre-edge region. We use this feature to probe the molecular dynamics after photoexcitation.
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| 2. |
- Wolf, T.J.A., et al.
(författare)
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Probing ultrafast ππ*/nπ* internal conversion in organic chromophores via K-edge resonant absorption
- 2017
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2041-1723. ; 8:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Many photoinduced processes including photosynthesis and human vision happen in organic molecules and involve coupled femtosecond dynamics of nuclei and electrons. Organic molecules with heteroatoms often possess an important excited-state relaxation channel from an optically allowed ππ* to a dark nπ* state. The ππ*/nπ* internal conversion is difficult to investigate, as most spectroscopic methods are not exclusively sensitive to changes in the excited-state electronic structure. Here, we report achieving the required sensitivity by exploiting the element and site specificity of near-edge soft X-ray absorption spectroscopy. As a hole forms in the n orbital during ππ*/nπ* internal conversion, the absorption spectrum at the heteroatom K-edge exhibits an additional resonance. We demonstrate the concept using the nucleobase thymine at the oxygen K-edge, and unambiguously show that ππ*/nπ* internal conversion takes place within (60 ± 30) fs. High-level-coupled cluster calculations confirm the method’s impressive electronic structure sensitivity for excited-state investigations.
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