Intramolecular Electron Transfer in Frozen Solvents: Charge Transfer and Local Triplet States Population Dynamics...

In frozen solvents at 77 K, ultrafast (≤250 fs) photoinduced intramolecular electron transfer (ET) in bichromophoric donor-acceptor ([D-A]) diarylmethane lactones produces a covalently linked radical ion pair, ¹[D^•+-A^•-]. Steady state and time-resolved luminescence measurements reveal that ¹[D^•+-A^•-] decays to charge-separated (³[D^•+-A^•-]) and donor-centered ([³D*-A]) triplets, which display dual phosphorescence. ³[D^•+-A^•-] and [³D*-A] are formed in parallel via two intersystem crossing mechanisms: spin orbit charge transfer (SOCT) and hyperfine coupling (HFC), with solvent dependent branching ratio. The solvent drives the D-A alignment during the freezing process to adapt to increasing solvent polarity, producing inhomogeneous ground-state population distribution with solvent-dependent D-A exchange interaction, which plays a key role in partitioning into SOCT and HFC mechanisms. In polar glasses, a third phosphorescence band appears due to dissociative back ET in ³[D^•+-A^•-] resulting in excited open ring biradical.