Photoexcited charge pair escape and recombination

Abstract

We report photocurrent transients arising from the pulsed laser excitation of the dipolar first excited singlet sate S{sub 1} of trans 4-dimethyl-amino-4{prime}-nitrostilbene (DMANS) in toluene solution. The currents arise from rotational reorientation of DMANS dipoles with respect to the axis of an applied electric field. The method appears to offer a simple and general approach to the measurement of the change in dipole moment upon electronic excitation of a molecule. In another experiment, durene (1,2,4,5-tetramethylbenzene) dissolved in n-hexane was photoionized by 35 psec pulses at 266 nm. Transient absorption at 1064 nm arising chiefly from geminate electrons was detected and used to monitor the recombination of the electron-cation pairs produced by two-photon ionization. An excellent fit to the recombination kinetics was obtained by assuming that the distribution of initial electron-cation separations was of the form r{sup 2}EXP = r{sup 2}/(2L{sup 3})exp({minus}r/L) with a mean radius 3L = 5.7 nm.