Abstract
Singlet fission is a spin-Allowed process in which an excited singlet state evolves into two triplet states. We use femtosecond stimulated Raman spectroscopy, an ultrafast vibrational technique, to follow the molecular structural evolution during singlet fission in order to determine the mechanism of this process. In crystalline pentacene, we observe the formation of an intermediate characterized by pairs of excited state peaks that are red-and blue-shifted relative to the ground state features. We hypothesize that these features arise from the formation of cationic and anionic species due to partial transfer of electron density from one pentacene molecule to a neighboring molecule. These observations provide experimental evidence for the role of states with significant charge-Transfer character which facilitate the singlet fission process in pentacene. Our work both provides new insight into the singlet fission mechanism in pentacene and demonstrates the utility of structurally-sensitive time-resolved spectroscopic techniques in monitoring ultrafast processes.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1242-1250 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Chemical Science |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the Department of Energy, DESC0018203. The authors thank Professor James Johns (U. Minnesota) for use of the PVT furnace and helpful discussions, and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute (MSI) at the University of Minnesota for providing resources that contributed to the research results reported in this paper. We thank Matthew Vollmer and Connie Lu for assistance with synthesis.
Publisher Copyright:
© The Royal Society of Chemistry 2018.