Nuclear Motion Driven Ultrafast Photodissociative Charge Transfer of the PENNA Cation: An Experimental and Computational Study.

Ultrafast nuclear driven charge transfer prior to dissociation is an important process in modular systems as was demonstrated experimentally in the bifunctional molecule 2-phenylethyl-N,N-dimethylamine (PENNA) in work by Lehr et al. ( J. Phys. Chem. A 2005 , 109 , 8074 ). The ultrafast dynamics of PENNA photoexcited to the three lowest electronic states of the cation (D0, D1, and D2) was studied using quantum chemistry and surface hoping. We show that a conical intersection, localized in the Franck-Condon region, between the D0 and the D1 states, leads to an ultrafast charge transfer, computed here to be on a time scale of 65 fs, between the phenyl and the amine charged subunits. On the D0 ground state, the dissociation proceeds on the 60 ps time scale through a 19 kcal/mol late barrier. The computed kinetic energy release is in good agreement with a new experimental measurement of PENNA ionization by an 800 nm 30 fs intense laser pulse.