Competition Between Intersystem Crossing and Vibrational Cooling in Photoinduced Valence Tautomerism of a Cobalt-Dioxolene Complex Revealed with Femtosecond M-Edge XANES

Cobalt complexes that undergo charge-transfer induced spin-transitions (CTIST) or valence tautomerism (VT) from low spin (LS) Co(III) to high spin (HS) Co(II) are potential candidates for magneto-optical switches. We use M-edge XANES spectroscopy with 40 fs time resolution to measure the excited-state dynamics of Co(III)(Cat-N-SQ)(Cat-N-BQ), where Cat-N-BQ and Cat-N-SQ are the singly and doubly reduced forms of the 2-(2-hydroxy-3,5-di-tert-butylphenyl-imino)-4,6-di-tert-butylcyclohexa-3,5-dienone ligand. The extreme ultraviolet probe pulses, produced using a tabletop high-harmonic generation light source, measure 3p3d transitions and are sensitive to the spin and oxidation state of the Co center. Photoexcitation at 525 nm produces a low-spin Co(II) ligand-to-metal charge transfer state which undergoes intersystem crossing to high-spin Co(II) in 67 fs. Vibrational cooling from this hot HS Co(II) state competes on the hundreds-of-fs timescale with back-intersystem crossing to the ground state, with 60% of the population trapped in a cold HS Co(II) state for 24 ps. Ligand field multiplet simulations accurately reproduce the ground-state spectra and support the excited-state assignments. This work demonstrates the ability of M-edge XANES to measure ultrafast photophysics of molecular Co complexes.<br><br><br>

Ultrafast spin crossover in a single crystal

Femtosecond spectroscopy and electron diffraction are used to characterize spin crossover in single crystal iron(II)-tris(bipyridine)-bis(hexafluorophosphate). The high-spin lifetime is reduced compared to in solution. Preliminary electron diffraction experiments show evidence of ultrafast Fe-N bond elongation associated with spin crossover and the subsequent molecular reorganization resulting from vibrational cooling.

Excited State Structural Evolution of a GFP Single-Site Mutant Tracked by Tunable Femtosecond-Stimulated Raman Spectroscopy

Tracking vibrational motions during a photochemical or photophysical process has gained momentum, due to its sensitivity to the progression of reaction and change of environment. In this work, we implemented an advanced ultrafast vibrational technique, femtosecond-stimulated Raman spectroscopy (FSRS), to monitor the excited state structural evolution of an engineered green fluorescent protein (GFP) single-site mutant S205V. This mutation alters the original excited state proton transfer (ESPT) chain. By strategically tuning the Raman pump to different wavelengths (i.e., 801, 539, and 504 nm) to achieve pre-resonance with transient excited state electronic bands, the characteristic Raman modes of the excited protonated (A*) chromophore species and intermediate deprotonated (I*) species can be selectively monitored. The inhomogeneous distribution/population of A* species go through ESPT with a similar ~300 ps time constant, confirming that bridging a water molecule to protein residue T203 in the ESPT chain is the rate-limiting step. Some A* species undergo vibrational cooling through high-frequency motions on the ~190 ps time scale. At early times, a portion of the largely protonated A* species could also undergo vibrational cooling or return to the ground state with a ~80 ps time constant. On the photoproduct side, a ~1330 cm−1 delocalized motion is observed, with dispersive line shapes in both the Stokes and anti-Stokes FSRS with a pre-resonance Raman pump, which indicates strong vibronic coupling, as the mode could facilitate the I* species to reach a relatively stable state (e.g., the main fluorescent state) after conversion from A*. Our findings disentangle the contributions of various vibrational motions active during the ESPT reaction, and offer new structural dynamics insights into the fluorescence mechanisms of engineered GFPs and other analogous autofluorescent proteins.