Excited state intramolecular proton transfer in Schiff bases. Decay of the locally excited enol state observed by femtosecond resolved fluorescence.

Although the late (t>1 ps) photoisomerization steps in Schiff bases have been described in good detail, some aspects of the ultrafast (sub-100 fs) proton transfer process, including the possible existence of an energy barrier, still require experimental assessment. In this contribution we present femtosecond fluorescence up-conversion studies to characterize the excited state enol to cis-keto tautomerization through measurements of the transient molecular emission. Salicylideneaniline and salicylidene-1-naphthylamine were examined in acetonitrile solutions. We have resolved sub-100 fs and sub-0.5 ps emission components which are attributed to the decay of the locally excited enol form and to vibrationally excited states as they transit to the relaxed cis-keto species in the first electronically excited state. From the early spectral evolution, the lack of a deuterium isotope effect, and the kinetics measured with different amounts of excess vibrational energy, it is concluded that the intramolecular proton transfer in the S1 surface occurs as a barrierless process where the initial wave packet evolves in a repulsive potential toward the cis-keto form in a time scale of about 50 fs. The absence of an energy barrier suggests the participation of normal modes which modulate the donor to acceptor distance, thus reducing the potential energy during the intramolecular proton transfer.