Green, James A;
Gómez, Sandra;
Worth, Graham;
Santoro, Fabrizio;
Improta, Roberto;
(2022)
Solvent Effects on Ultrafast Charge Transfer Population: Insights from the Quantum Dynamics of Guanine-Cytosine in Chloroform.
Chemistry
, Article e202201731. 10.1002/chem.202201731.
(In press).
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Abstract
We study the ultrafast photoactivated dynamics of the hydrogen bonded dimer Guanine-Cytosine in chloroform solution, focusing on the population of the Guanine→Cytosine charge transfer state (GC-CT), an important elementary process for the photophysics and photochemistry of nucleic acids. We integrate a quantum dynamics propagation scheme, based on a linear vibronic model parameterized through time dependent density functional theory calculations, with four different solvation models, either implicit or explicit. On average, after 50 fs, 30∼40 % of the bright excited state population has been transferred to GC-CT. This process is thus fast and effective, especially when transferring from the Guanine bright excited states, in line with the available experimental studies. Independent of the adopted solvation model, the population of GC-CT is however disfavoured in solution with respect to the gas phase. We show that dynamical solvation effects are responsible for this puzzling result and assess the different chemical-physical effects modulating the population of CT states on the ultrafast time-scale. We also propose some simple analyses to predict how solvent can affect the population transfer between bright and CT states, showing that the effect of the solute/solvent electrostatic interactions on the energy of the CT state can provide a rather reliable indication of its possible population.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Solvent Effects on Ultrafast Charge Transfer Population: Insights from the Quantum Dynamics of Guanine-Cytosine in Chloroform |
| Location: | Germany |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1002/chem.202201731 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1002/chem.202201731 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Authors. Chemistry - A European Journal published by Wiley-VCH GmbH This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made. |
| Keywords: | Charge Transfer, DNA, Diabatic States, MCTDH, Photophysics |
| UCL classification: | 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 UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10157098 |
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