Isolating Pure Donor and Acceptor Signals by Polarization-Controlled Transient Absorption Spectroscopy

J Phys Chem Lett. 2023 Jun 15;14(23):5390-5396. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c01451. Epub 2023 Jun 6.

Abstract

The optical spectra of molecules are often highly congested, inhibiting definite assignment of features and dynamics. In this work, we demonstrate and apply a polarization-based strategy for the decomposition of time-resolved optical spectra to analyze the electronic structure and energy transfer in a molecular donor-acceptor (D-A) dyad. We choose a dyad with orthogonal transition dipole moments for D and A and high fluorescence quantum yield to show that polarization-controlled ultrafast transient absorption spectra can isolate the pure D and A parts of the total signal. This provides a strategy to greatly reduce spectral congestion in complex systems and thus allows for detailed studies of electronic structure and electronic energy transfer.