Photosynthesis, the foundation of most life, begins when sunlight is captured by (bacterio)chlorophyll (BChl) and carotenoid (Crt) pigments. These molecules are arranged so that captured energy migrates rapidly to reaction centres (RC), where it is stored as a charge separation. The complementary absorption of Crt and BChl pigments, and rapid energy transfer between them, underpins solar...
Benzothiadiazole (BTD) derivatives have emerged as versatile building blocks for the fabrication of smart porous materials. Herein, we report on experimental and theoretical studies of two BTD-based H-bonded organic frameworks (HOFs) and their molecular units (MUs) in solutions and in solid state (BTIA and BTTA).1-3 The MUs in solutions exhibit a photoinduced intramolecular charge-transfer...
Ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) [1-3] is a powerful tool for tracking the nuclear dynamics of photo-induced gas-phase reactions in real-time with picometre spatial and 150-240-fs temporal resolution [4,5]. However, time-resolving rapidly evolving photo-induced processes, such as photoisomerization [6] in vision (<350-fs predicted total timescale), remains challenging due to...
Linear and ultrafast optical techniques (including Raman, Infrared and Uv/Vis spectroscopy) are excellent tools to investigate molecular structure and dynamics in solution. However, these spectroscopic methods are generally not sensitive to the size of molecules. Inspired by concepts from NMR, we have developed a spectroscopic method that adds a size dimension to optical spectra: optical...
