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On the observation of photo-excitation effects in molecules using muon spin spectroscopy

Nature Materials volume 21, pages 1108–1109 (2022)Cite this article

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Matters Arising to this article was published on 10 May 2021

The Original Article was published on 12 December 2016

arising from K. Wang et al. Nature Materials https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4816 (2017)

Wang et al. reported changes in the muonium (Mu) addition rate at different sites in 6,13-bis(tri(isopropyl)-silylethynyl)-pentacene (TIPS-Pn) in CH2Cl2 when it was photo-excited compared with the ground electronic state1. To make this claim, one must demonstrate that (1) there is a change in the overall reaction rate of Mu with TIPS-Pn, and (2) there is a change in the relative yield of each muoniated radical formed by Mu addition to TIPS-Pn. Our independent analysis of the transverse-field muon spin rotation (TF-μSR) and avoided level crossing μSR (ALC-μSR) spectra in ref. 1 indicates that there is no statistically significant effect of photo-excitation.

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Fig. 1: Results of our analysis of the μSR spectra of 10 mM TIPS-Pn in CH2Cl2.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Muon Spin Spectroscopy, Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland

    R. Scheuermann

  2. TRIUMF Center for Molecular and Materials Science, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    I. McKenzie

Authors
  1. R. Scheuermann
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  2. I. McKenzie
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R.S. and I.M. contributed equally to this work.

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Correspondence to R. Scheuermann or I. McKenzie.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Peer review information Nature Materials thanks Roderick Macrae, Emil Roduner and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–8, Table 1 and details of the theory, analysis and discussion.

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Scheuermann, R., McKenzie, I. On the observation of photo-excitation effects in molecules using muon spin spectroscopy. Nat. Mater. 21, 1108–1109 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-01002-6

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