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Different timescales during ultrafast stilbene isomerization in the gas and liquid phases revealed using time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy

Nature Chemistry volume 14, pages 1126–1132 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Directly contrasting ultrafast excited-state dynamics in the gas and liquid phases is crucial to understanding the influence of complex environments. Previous studies have often relied on different spectroscopic observables, rendering direct comparisons challenging. Here, we apply extreme-ultraviolet time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy to both gaseous and liquid cis-stilbene, revealing the coupled electronic and nuclear dynamics that underlie its isomerization. Our measurements track the excited-state wave packets from excitation along the complete reaction path to the final products. We observe coherent excited-state vibrational dynamics in both phases of matter that persist to the final products, enabling the characterization of the branching space of the S1–S0 conical intersection. We observe a systematic lengthening of the relaxation timescales in the liquid phase and a red shift of the measured excited-state frequencies that is most pronounced for the complex reaction coordinate. These results characterize in detail the influence of the liquid environment on both electronic and structural dynamics during a complete photochemical transformation.

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Fig. 1: Schematic illustration of the experimental methods.
Fig. 2: Time-resolved photoelectron spectra of the photoisomerization of gaseous cis-stilbene.
Fig. 3: Time-resolved photoelectron spectra of the photoisomerization of liquid cis-stilbene.
Fig. 4: Fourier transforms of the coherent oscillations observed in excited- and ground-state signals.
Fig. 5: Summary of the excited-state dynamics of cis-stilbene.

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The data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published Article (and its Supplementary Information file). Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

We thank T. Martinez, H. Weir and M. Williams for discussions and for providing the data shown in Supplementary Fig. 7a. We acknowledge financial support from ETH Zürich and the Swiss National Science Foundation through grant 200021_172946 (H.J.W.). Z.Y. acknowledges financial support from an ETH Career Seed Grant No SEED-12 19-1/1-004952-000. C.W. additionally acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 11534004, 11627807, 11774130) and the financial support from Jilin University. J.S. and P.S. are grateful for the financial support of the Czech Science Foundation (Grant No. 21-26601X, EXPRO project). J.S. is a student of the International Max Planck Research School ‘Many-Particle Systems in Structured Environments’.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Chuncheng Wang, Max D.J. Waters, Pengju Zhang.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Physical Chemistry, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Chuncheng Wang, Max D. J. Waters, Pengju Zhang, Vít Svoboda, Tran Trung Luu, Conaill Perry, Zhong Yin & Hans Jakob Wörner

  2. Institute of Atomic and Molecular Physics, Jilin University, Changchun, People’s Republic of China

    Chuncheng Wang

  3. Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague, Prague, Czech Republic

    Jiří Suchan & Petr Slavíček

  4. Department of Physics, The University of Hong Kong, SAR Hong Kong, People’s Republic of China

    Tran Trung Luu

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Contributions

H.J.W. and C.W. conceived the experiments. C.W., M.D.J.W. and V.S. conducted the gas-phase measurements. P.Z. and C.W. conducted the liquid-phase measurements with the support of T.T.L., Z.Y. and C.P. Data analysis was performed by C.W., P.Z., T.T.L., V.S. and M.D.J.W. H.J.W supervised the experimental part of the study. All time-dependent calculations were performed by J.S. and P.S. Additional ab initio calculations were provided by M.D.J.W. Space–charge effects were simulated by P.Z. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the results and to the preparation and finalization of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Pengju Zhang, Petr Slavíček or Hans Jakob Wörner.

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Nature Chemistry thanks Thomas Weinacht and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1

The experimental setup for the liquid-phase TRPES measurements.

Extended Data Fig. 2

The experimental setup for the gas-phase measurements.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information File

Supplementary Figs. 1–13, text and Tables 1–17.

Supplementary Data

Readable versions of tables in Supplementary Section 8.

Source data

Source Data Fig. 2

Plotted data in numerical format.

Source Data Fig. 3

Plotted data in numerical format..

Source Data Fig. 4

Plotted data in numerical format

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Wang, C., Waters, M.D.J., Zhang, P. et al. Different timescales during ultrafast stilbene isomerization in the gas and liquid phases revealed using time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy. Nat. Chem. 14, 1126–1132 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-022-01012-0

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