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Vibrational Energy Redistribution between CH Stretching Modes in Alkyl Chain Monolayers Revealed by Time-Resolved
Michael Lackner1, Marvin Hille1, Eckart Hasselbrink1
1Fakultät für Chemie and Center for Nanointegration (CENIDE) , Universität Duisburg-Essen , D-45117 Essen , Germany.
Abstract:
The vibrational dynamics of the various CH stretching modes in a fatty acid Langmuir-Blodgett film was studied using a resonant narrowband infrared (IR) laser pulse for pumping and a broadband femtosecond IR visible pulse pair for detection in a sum frequency spectroscopy setup. The resulting two-dimensional spectra indicate that pumping either the antisymmetric methyl or methylene stretch results in the transfer of energy to the other modes on a time scale faster than 2 ps. This rapid process is followed by energy redistribution to other modes, presumably the bending and internal rotational modes, with a time constant of approximately 85 ps. The formation of gauche defects is not observed within the first 250 ps. The whole spectrum recovers on a time scale of several nanoseconds, indicating dissipation of the excitation energy into the substrate.
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