Intramolecular charge transfer and dual fluorescence of 4-(dimethylamino)benzonitrile: ultrafast branching followed by a two-fold decay mechanism.

In this contribution we present new experimental and theoretical results for the intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) reaction underlying the dual fluorescence of 4-(dimethylamino)benzonitrile (DMABN), which indicate that the fully twisted ICT (TICT) state is responsible for the time-resolved transient absorption spectrum while a distinct partially twisted ICT (pTICT) structure is suggested for the fluorescent ICT state. This journal is © the Owner Societies 2011