Riley, J;
Wang, B;
Woodhouse, J;
Assmann, M;
Worth, GA;
Fielding, HH;
(2018)
Unravelling the Role of an Aqueous Environment on the Electronic Structure and Ionisation of Phenol Using Photoelectron Spectroscopy.
The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
, 9
(4)
pp. 678-682.
10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b03310.
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Abstract
Water is the predominant medium for chemistry and biology yet its role in determining how molecules respond to ultraviolet light is not well understood at the molecular level. Here, we combine gas-phase and liquid-microjet photoelectron spectroscopy to investigate how an aqueous environment influences the electronic structure and relaxation dynamics of phenol, a ubiquitous motif in many biologically relevant chromophores. The vertical ionisation energies of electronically excited states are important quantities that govern the rates of charge-transfer reactions and, in phenol, the vertical ionisation energy of the first electronically excited state is found to be lowered by around 0.8 eV in aqueous solution. The initial relaxation dynamics following photoexcitation with ultraviolet light appear to be remarkably similar in the gas-phase and aqueous solution; however, in aqueous solution, we find evidence to suggest that solvated electrons are formed on an ultrafast timescale following photoexcitation just above the conical intersection between the first two excited electronic states.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Unravelling the Role of an Aqueous Environment on the Electronic Structure and Ionisation of Phenol Using Photoelectron Spectroscopy |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b03310 |
| Publisher version: | http://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b03310 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This is an open access article published under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the author and source are cited. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Chemistry |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10042164 |
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