Measuring Coherently Coupled Intramolecular Vibrational and Charge-Transfer Dynamics with Two-Dimensional Vibrational-Electronic Spectroscopy.

Abstract

We demonstrate Fourier transform (FT) 2D vibrational-electronic (2D VE) spectroscopy employing a novel mid-IR and optical pulse sequence. This new femtosecond third-order nonlinear spectroscopy provides the high time and frequency resolutions of existing 2D FT techniques; however, resulting 2D VE spectra contain IR and electronic dipole moment cross terms. We use 2D VE spectroscopy to help understand the vibrational-electronic couplings in the cyanide-bridged transition-metal mixed valence complex [(CN)5Fe(II)CNRu(III)(NH3)5](-) dissolved in formamide. The amplitudes of the cross-peaks in the 2D VE spectra reveal that three of the intramolecular cyanide stretching vibrations lying along the charge-transfer axis are coherently coupled to the metal-to-metal charge-transfer electronic transition with differing strengths. Analysis of the 2D VE line shapes reveals positive and negative correlations of the cyanide stretching modes with the charge-transfer transition depending on the physical orientation of the vibration in the molecule and its interaction with the solvent. The insights found thus far into the vibronic couplings in the mixed valence model system indicate that the 2D VE technique will be a valuable addition to the existing multidimensional spectroscopy toolbox.