Release Summary
Scientists have achieved the first real-time visualization of how “excited-state aromaticity” emerges within just hundreds of femtoseconds and then triggers a molecule to change from bent to planar structure in a few picoseconds. By combining ultrafast electronic and vibrational spectroscopies, the team captured these fleeting structural changes at the molecular level and showed that aromaticity appears before—and then drives—the structural planarization. Their findings lay the groundwork for designing more efficient photoactive materials, such as sensors and light-driven molecular switches, by leveraging the power of aromaticity in excited states.
For Details（EurekAlert!）
- Authors: Yusuke Yoneda[a,b] ,Tomoaki Konishi[c] ,Kensuke Suga[c,d] ,Shohei Saito*[d] and Hikaru Kuramochi*[a,b]
[a] Research Center of Integrative Molecular Systems (CIMoS),Institute for Molecular Science, National Institutes of Natural Sciences
[b] Graduate Institute for Advanced Studies, SOKENDAI
[c] Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, Kyoto University
[d] Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science, Osaka University
*Corresponding Authors
- Journal Name: Journal of the American Chemical Society
- Journal Title: “Excited-State Aromatization Drives Nonequilibrium Planarization Dynamics.”
- DOI: 10.1021/jacs.4c18623
