This thesis gives insights into the real-time dynamics of several free carbenes and radicals on a femtosecond and nanosecond time scale. The experiments were performed with radicals, singlet carbenes and triplet carbenes of various sizes. Several neutral excited states as well as the ionic ground state were characterized. Despite the relevance of such reactive intermediates in almost all chemical reactions, only relatively little experimental information on such systems is found in the literature. This is linked to the experimental challenge of producing such species under isolated conditions. The intermediates are formed from precursor molecules under interaction- free conditions by supersonic jet flash pyrolysis. The precursor molecules were synthetically designed to show clean thermal dissociation into one specific intermediate. A large variety of spectroscopic techniques was applied to study the intermediates. Each method augments the results of the other methods. This enabled to successfully approach the main goal of this thesis: to understand the excited-state dynamics of organic intermediates. The excited states were found to deactivate rapidly to the hot ground state. The observed fast decay is presumably linked to coupled electronically excited states and relaxation takes place by internal conversion or conical intersections. Further reactions then take place on the ground state surface. Absorption spectra, photodissociation dynamics, photoelectron spectra, ionization potentials, excited-state lifetimes and dissociative photoionization were elucidated by the measurements. Pulsed and continuous light sources were used over a large spectral range (UV, Vis, VUV). A well-defined amount of energy was deposited into the molecule. After internal conversion has taken place, a microcanonical ensemble of reactive intermediates can be studied. This data helps to understand the energetics and reaction channels of intermediates. Velocity map imaging enabled to monitor the pyrolysis efficiency in real time by analyzing photoion images. This observation facilitates clean intermediate generation. Experimental results were compared to quantum chemical calculations to aid the interpretation as well as to test the performance of theoretical approaches. Hydrocarbon radicals and carbenes are regarded as benchmark systems for computational methods due to their several low-lying electronic states and open-shell electronic configuration. The experimental data can help to identify and understand the contributions of the examined intermediates to the chemistry of high energy environments (e. g., hydrocarbon cracking reactors, interstellar space and combustion chambers). Here increased numbers of hydrocarbon intermediates are often present and usually have a strong impact on the overall reaction mechanism. Such environments contain in general a complex mixture of several different intermediates. The more spectroscopic and dynamic properties of each isolated intermediate are known, the easier it is to identify it among multiple components and to understand how it contributes to the overall reaction mechanism. Electronic excitation can take place by radiation, particle collisions or thermally at very high temperatures. How excited states influence the reaction mechanisms is still a matter of currant research. / Diese Arbeit gibt Einblicke in die Dynamik angeregter Zustände von mehreren isolierten Carbenen und Radikalen. Experimente wurden an verschieden großen Radikalen, singlet Carbenen und triplet Carbenen durchgeführt. Angeregte elektronische Zustände, Grundzustände von Radikal-Kationen und die Photodissoziations-Dynamik des Grundzustandes wurden charakterisiert. Obwohl beinahe alle chemischen Reaktionen über reaktive Intermediate ablaufen, ihnen Schlüsselrollen bei Verbrennungsprozessen zugesprochen werden und sie in hohen Konzentrationen in interstellaren Medien vorkommen, sind viele dieser Spezies unzureichend charakterisiert. Dies liegt hauptsächlich am hohen experimentellen Aufwand, der zur sauberen Herstellung und Untersuchung von Intermediaten nötig ist. Die Intermediate in dieser Arbeit wurden mittels Supersonic-Jet- Flash-Pyrolysis generiert. Mit dieser Technik konnten die hoch reaktiven Moleküle konserviert und unter isolierten Bedingungen spektroskopisch untersucht werden. Hierfür wurden spezielle Vorläufermoleküle synthetisch hergestellt und auf ihre saubere thermische Zersetzung hin getestet und optimiert. Die Intermediate wurden mit einer Reihe von spektroskopischen Methoden untersucht, die sich auf eine hervorragende Art und Weise ergänzten. Das Hauptziel der Dissertation konnte somit erfolgreich abgeschlossen werden und das Verhalten angeregten Zustände einiger wichtiger Intermediate verstanden werden. Die Zustände relaxieren auf einer Femtosekunden-Zeitskala zum heißen Grundzustand. Die schnelle Deaktivierung ist allerWahrscheinlichkeit nach auf eine Kopplung der elektronisch angeregten Zustände zurückzuführen. Die Relaxation erfolgt über interne Konversion und konische Durchschneidungen. Photochemische Reaktionen laufen anschließend vom heißen Grundzustand aus ab. Zusätzlich konnten viele Charakteristika der Intermediate untersucht werden: Absorptionsspektren, Photochemie, Photoelektronenspektren, Ionisierungsenergien und dissoziative Photoionisation. Für die Untersuchungen wurde, über einen breiten spektralen Bereich (UV,Vis,VUV), hauptsächlich frequenz- und zeitaufgelöste Laser-Spektroskopie eingesetzt. Nachdem die Moleküle zum Grundzustand relaxiert waren, konnte die Dynamik eines mikrokanonischen Ensembles von reaktiven Intermediaten untersucht werden. Diese Untersuchungen helfen die Energetik und Reaktionskanäle der Intermediate zu verstehen. Zusätzlich wurden Messungen mit Synchrotron- Strahlung und TPEPICO-Spektroskopie durchgeführt; vorwiegend um die IPs der Spezies zu bestimmen wurde diese Technik angewandt. Velocity-Map-Imaging wurde zusammen mit der Radikalquelle erprobt. Ergänzend zu zeitaufgelösten Photoelektronenspektren konnten mit dieser Methode neue Wege zur Optimierung der Radikalerzeugung aufgezeigt werden. Die Effizienz der Pyrolyse konnte anhand der Photoionen-Images in Echtzeit verfolgt werden. Dies vereinfacht die Darstellung reaktiver Intermediate. Die experimentellen Daten wurden mit quantenchemischen Rechnungen verglichen, um die Interpretation zu erleichtern. Des Weiteren weisen Intermediate häufig eine komplexe elektronische Struktur auf und können somit zum evaluieren quantenmechanischer Methoden verwendet werden. Die erarbeiteten experimentellen Daten können helfen die spektroskopisch untersuchten Intermediate in komplexen Reaktionsgemischen zu erkennen und ihre dynamische Rolle darin besser zu verstehen. Je mehr Information über einzelne isolierte Intermediate bekannt ist, desto einfacher können ihre Beiträge differenziert aufgeschlüsselt werden. Eine erhöhte Anzahl von Intermediaten wird vor allem an Orten mit hoher Energiedichte beobachtet (z.B. im interstellaren Raum und in Motoren). Elektronisch angeregte Zustände der Moleküle können hier durch Teilchenstöße, Strahlung oder sogar thermisch bei sehr hohen Temperaturen angeregt werden. Wie elektronisch angeregte Zustände Reaktionsmechanismen beeinflussen können, ist noch Stand aktueller Forschung.

Understanding the properties of electronically interacting molecular chromophores, which involve internally coupled electronic-vibrational motions, is important to the spectroscopy of many biological systems. Here we apply linear absorption, circular dichroism, and two-dimensional fluorescence spectroscopy to study the local structure and excited state dynamics of excitonically coupled cyanine dimers that are rigidly positioned within the sugar-phosphate backbones of the DNA. Dimer probes were positioned within the double-stranded DNA duplex and at the single-strand/double-stranded DNA junction to examine the positional dependence of the structural variation and fluctuations. We interpret spectroscopic measurements in terms of the Holstein vibronic dimer model, from which we obtain information about the local conformation of the dimer probe locally within their respective DNA environments. We show that the exciton-coupling strength of the dimer-DNA construct can be systematically varied with temperature below the double-stranded – single-strand DNA denaturation transition. Using time-resolve 2DFS measurements we observed long lived vibronic coherences in the system. The properties of the cyanine DNA construct we determine suggest that it may be employed as a useful model system to test fundamental concepts of protein DNA interactions and the role of electronic-vibrational coherence in electronic energy migration within exciton-coupled biomolecular arrays. This dissertation contains previously published and unpublished co-authored material.

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Ultra-violet and visible light induced processes in small organic molecules play very important roles in many fields, e.g., environmental sciences, biology, material development, chemistry, astrophysics and many others. Thus it is of great importance to better understand the mechanisms behind these processes. To achieve this, a bottom-up approach is most effective, where the photo-induced dynamics occurring in the simplest organic molecule (ethylene) are used as a starting point. Simple substituents and functional groups are added in a controlled manner to ethylene, and changes in the dynamics are investigated as a function of these modifications. In this manner, the dynamics occurring in more complex systems can be explored from a known base. In this thesis, the excited state dynamics of small organic molecules are studied by a combination of time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy and various computational methods in order to determine the basic rules necessary to help understand and predict the dynamics of photo-induced processes. The dynamics occurring in ethylene involve a double bond torsion on the ππ* excited state, followed by the decay to the ground state coupled with pyramidalization and hydrogen migration. Several different routes of chemical modification are used as the basis to probe these dynamics as the molecular complexity is increased. (i) When ethylene is modified by the addition of an alkoxyl group (-OCnH2n+1), a new bond cleavage reaction is observed on the πσ* state. When modified by a cyano (-CN) group, a significant change in the carbon atom involved in pyramidalization is observed. (ii) When ethylene used to build up small cyclic polyenes, it is observed that the motifs of the ethylene dynamics persist, expressed as ring puckering and ring opening. (iii) In small heteroaromatic systems, i.e., an aromatic ring containing an ethylene-like sub-structure and one or two non-carbon atoms, the type of heteroatom (N: pyrrole, pyrazole O: furan) gives rise to different bond cleavage and ring puckering channels. Furthermore, adding an aldehyde group (-C=O) onto furan, as a way to lengthen the delocalised ring electron system, opens up additional reaction channels via a nπ* state. The results presented here are used to build up a more complete picture of the dynamics that occur in small molecular systems after they are excited by a visible or UV photon, and are used as a basis to motivate further investigations. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 5: Manuscript. Paper 6: Manuscript.</p>

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of Chemistry / Christine Aikens / Thiolate-protected noble metal nanoparticles (~2 nm size) are efficient solar photon harvesters, as they favorably absorb within the visible region. Clear mechanistic insights regarding the photo-physics of the excited state dynamics in thiolate-protected noble metal nanoclusters are important for future photocatalytic, light harvesting and photoluminescence applications. Herein, the core and higher excited states lying in the visible range are investigated using the time-dependent density functional theory method for different thiolate-protected nanoclusters. Nonadiabatic molecular dynamics simulations are performed using the fewest switches surface hopping approach with a time-dependent Kohn-Sham (FSSH-TDKS) description of the electronic states with decoherence corrections to study the electronic relaxation dynamics. Calculations on the [Au₂₅ (SH)₁₈]⁻¹ nanocluster showed that relaxations between core excited states occur on a short time scale (2-18 ps). No semiring or other states were observed at an energy lower than the core-based S₁ state, which suggested that the experimentally observed picosecond time constants could be core-to-core transitions rather than core-to-semiring transitions. Electronic relaxation dynamics on [Au₂₅ (SH)₁₈]⁻¹ with different R ligands (R = CH₃, C₂H₅, C₃H₇, MPA) [MPA = mercaptopropanoic acid] showed that all ligand clusters including the simplest SH model follow a similar trend in decay within the core states. In the presence of higher excited states, R= H, CH₃, C₂H₅, C₃H₇ demonstrated similar relaxations trends, whereas R=MPA showed a different relaxation of core states due to a smaller LUMO+1-LUMO+2 gap. Overall, the S₁ state gave the slowest decay in all ligated clusters. An examination of separate electron and hole relaxations in the [Au₂₅ (SCH₃)₁₈]⁻¹ nanocluster showed how the independent electron and hole relaxations contribute to its overall relaxation dynamics. Relaxation dynamics in the Au₁₈(SH)₁₄ nanocluster revealed that the S₁ state has the slowest decay, which is a semiring to core charge transfer state. Hole relaxations are faster than electron relaxations in the Au₁₈(SH)₁₄ cluster due its closely packed HOMOs. The dynamics in the Au₃₈(SH)₂₄ nanocluster predicted that the slowest decay, the decay of S₁₁ or the combined S₁₁-S₁₂, S₁-S₂-S₄-S₇ and S₄-S₅-S₉-S₁₀ decay, involves intracore relaxations. The phonon spectral densities and vibrational frequencies suggested that the low frequency (25 cm⁻¹) coherent phonon emission reported experimentally could be the bending of the bi-icosahedral Au₂₃ core or the “fan blade twisting” mode of two icosahedral units. Relaxation dynamics of the silver nanoparticle [Ag₂₅ (SR)₁₈]⁻¹ showed that both [Ag₂₅(SH)₁₈]⁻¹ and [Au₂₅ (SH)₁₈]⁻¹ follow a common decay trend within the core states and the higher excited states.

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Light or photons can excite electrons in a molecule, leading to creation of electronically excited states. Such processes are ubiquitous in nature, such as, vision, photo-protection of DNA/RNA nucleobases, light harvesting, energy and charger transfer etc. This photoexcitation induces nuclear motion on the excited states, leading the excess energy to dissipate either non-radiatively via internal conversion back down to the ground state, isomerization, and dissociation, or radiatively via fluorescence and phosphorescence. In this dissertation, we investigate the non-radiative processes in organic chromophores that ensue in an ultrafast manner, mediated via conical intersections (CoIn). Description of such excited state processes generally require multi-reference treatment because of quasi-degeneracy near CoIns. Hence, most insight about these processes is typically gained by constructing potential energy surface (PES) using multi-reference electronic structure methods along important reaction coordinates. Nonetheless, the aforementioned static treatment fails to provide any dynamical information, such as, excited state lifetime, state populations, branching ratio, quantum yield etc. In this dissertation, we have gone beyond the static treatment by undertaking computationally expensive non-adiabatic excited state molecular dynamics simulations employing trajectory surface hopping (TSH) methodology on PESs created on-the-fly using multi-reference electronic structure methods. This allows us to compare theoretical results to experimental observables, when possible, strengthening the explanations underlying those processes. Our goal is to examine the effect of structure, and of electronic structure methods on the excited state dynamics. We have examined the non-adiabatic excited state dynamics of cis,cis-1,3-cyclooctadiene (cc-COD), a cyclic diene, in an effort to systematically compare and contrast the dynamics of cc-COD to that of other well studied conjugated molecules. Such exploration is very significant, since the majority of the molecules involved in natural photoexcited processes, include an ethylenic double bond or alternating double bonds creating conjugation. Our calculations have revealed ultrafast sub-ps decay for cc-COD, and have illustrated that the internal conversion dynamics is facilitated by CoIns, dominated by twisting of one of the double bonds and pyramidalization of one of the carbons of that double bond, similar to trans-1,3-butadiene and unlike 1,3-cyclohexadiene (CHD). Our high-level electronic structure calculations have also explained the features in the experimental time-resolved photoelectron spectrum of cc-COD. Another molecule of biological importance, uracil, was also investigated using TSH simulations, by systematically increasing dynamical correlation. We have found that the inclusion of dynamical correlation for uracil leads to an almost barrierless PES on S2, leading to a faster decay and no population trap on this state. Uracil also contains a double bond and the simulations have revealed that the ultrafast relaxation is dominated by an ethylenic twist and pyramidalization of a carbon of that bond, increasing importance of such nuclear motion in photoexcited molecular dynamics. A comparison of the molecules studied have illustrated that the rigid molecules, such as uracil, CHD, have a very local CoIn seam space, whereas cc-COD, which is flexible having many low frequency degrees of freedom, has a non-local or extended CoIn seam space. Overall, the work performed in this dissertation, elucidates the significance of structure and conjugation, in the photoinduced coupled electron-nuclear dynamics in organic molecules. / Chemistry

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