Professor Kana Takematsu of Bowdoin University

"Moving protons in competing excited state pathways"

The controlled movement of charges is essential to chemical redox processes, including the harnessing of solar energy. The conversion of solar to chemical energy is key for environmental sustainability and national security. Our group uses a class of compounds called photoacids to investigate the coupling between light and movement of protons. Photoacids are compounds that become more acidic upon light excitation. We have focused our studies on aminonaphthol, photoacids which have two potential excited state proton transfer pathways at the nitrogen and oxygen sites. We will discuss how a combination of spectroscopic and theoretical tools can be used to shed light on the structural and environmental factors that tune these competing proton transfer pathways.