Long‐Lived Charge‐Transfer State Induced by Spin‐Orbit Charge Transfer Intersystem Crossing (SOCT‐ISC) in a Compact Spiro Electron Donor/Acceptor Dyad.

Liu, Dongyi; El‐Zohry, Ahmed M.; Taddei, Maria; Matt, Clemens; Bussotti, Laura; Wang, Zhijia; Zhao, Jianzhang; Mohammed, Omar F.; Di Donato, Mariangela; Weber, Stefan

We prepared conceptually novel, fully rigid, spiro compact electron donor (Rhodamine B, lactam form, RB)/acceptor (naphthalimide; NI) orthogonal dyad to attain the long‐lived triplet charge‐transfer (3CT) state, based on the electron spin control using spin‐orbit charge transfer intersystem crossing (SOCT‐ISC). Transient absorption (TA) spectra indicate the first charge separation (CS) takes place within 2.5 ps, subsequent SOCT‐ISC takes 8 ns to produce the 3NI* state. Then the slow secondary CS (125 ns) gives the long‐lived 3CT state (0.94 μs in deaerated n‐hexane) with high energy level (ca. 2.12 eV). The cascade photophysical processes of the dyad upon photoexcitation are summarized as 1NI*→1CT→3NI*→3CT. With time‐resolved electron paramagnetic resonance (TREPR) spectra, an EEEAAA electron‐spin polarization pattern was observed for the naphthalimide‐localized triplet state. Our spiro compact dyad structure and the electron spin‐control approach is different to previous methods for which invoking transition‐metal coordination or chromophores with intrinsic ISC ability is mandatory.

CHARGE transfer; ELECTRON donors; ELECTRON spin states; ELECTRON paramagnetic resonance; ELECTRON spin; DYADS; RHODAMINE B

Angewandte Chemie, 2020, Vol 132, Issue 28, p11688

0044-8249

Academic Journal

10.1002/ange.202003560