We have used knowledge of the electronic structure of excited states of acids to design molecules that exhibit enhanced excited-state acidity. Such "super" photoacids are the strongest reversible photoacids known and allow the time evolution of proton transfer to be examined in a wide array of organic solvents. This includes breaking/formation of the hydrogen bonds in hundreds of femtoseconds, solvent reorientation and relaxation in picoseconds, proton dissociation, and, finally, diffusion and geminate recombination of the dissociated proton, observed in nanoseconds.

The solvatochromic behavior of the green fluorescence protein (GFP) chromophore (p-hydroxybenzylideneimidazolone, p-HBDI) and its derivatives (p-methoxybenzylideneimidazolone, p-MeOBDI, and N-methyl-p-hydroxybenzylideneimidazolonium iodide, p-HBDIMe+) was studied using UV-vis-absorption spectroscopy in a wide array of solvents. The relative contribution of specific (polarity) vs nonspecific (hydrogen-bonding) solvation to the absorbance spectra was studied. On the basis of these data, we discuss the nature of the absorption peak of the protonated and deprotonated forms of the wild-type GFP.

We study steady-state and time-resolved fluorescence of 5-cyano-2-naphthol in various pure solvents. To some of these, excited-state proton transfer occurs within the excited-state lifetime of the chromophore. Solvatochromic shifts in the acid and anion bands are analyzed using the empirical Kamlet-Taft approach. The hydrogen-bond donated from the OH group to basic solvents accounts for most of the shift in the excitation spectra. This bond produces considerably larger shifts in the emission spectra, suggesting that it strengthens in the excited state. In contrast, the hydrogen bond donated from protic solvents to the hydroxyl oxygen is cleaved following photoexcitation. This bond (and not the change in dielectric constant) is responsible for the solvent-induced blue shift in anion fluorescence. Hence it must re-form simultaneously with the protontransfer event. Our time-resolved fluorescence data fit the solution of the Debye-Smoluchowski equation for reversible geminate recombination in a field of force, provided that the difference in excited-state lifetimes and contact quenching are taken into account. An extended theory of reversible geminate recombination provides an accurate description of the asymptotic behavior in this case. The quenching processes correlate with the solvent hydrogen-bond donation ability, implicating the involvement of hydrogen-bonded pathways.

Excited-state proton transfer to solvent (PTTS) of 5-cyano-2-naphthol was investigated in methanol/water mixtures. We have found that the time-resolved fluorescence data fit the solution of the Debye−Smoluchowski equation for the reversible geminate recombination of ions over the whole range of methanol/water concentration ratios. The rate constants of the elementary protolytic photochemical processes and their isotope effects were determined by a simultaneous analysis of the time-resolved fluorescence of the photoacid and its conjugated anion. The competition between adiabatic protonation and quenching of the excited naphtholate anion by the geminate proton was observed to diminish sharply near pure methanol. The dissociation rate coefficient near pure methanol depends on a power of the water concentration, which appears to decrease from 2 (for “ordinary” photoacids) to below 1 for “super” photoacids.