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Professor Gregor Jung “Photoacids – A unique combination of photochemistry and fluorescence”
June 18 @ 2:00 pm
Professor Gregor Jung
Department of Chemistry, University of Saarland – Saarbrücken, Germany
Abstract
Aromatic alcohols which become more acidic upon electronic excitation are called photoacids. Therefore, light can trigger, under certain conditions, the release of a proton to the surrounding. Among the large variety of this kind of photochemically active molecules, pyrene-derivatives are our preferred substance class due to their visible luminescence and other beneficial fluorescence properties.[1] As the change of the protonation state is associated with a change of the emission color, dual emissive probes can be designed e.g. as enzyme substrates, and up to four emission colors are realizable.[2] Currently, we exploit suchlike derivatives for grading the malignancy of meningioma, one of the most frequent brain tumors. In my presentation, I will give an overview ranging from the physicochemical fundamentals of the elementary reaction steps[3-5] to quantum-optical[6,7] and single-molecule experiments. Moreover, I will provide an outlook on future directions of the unique combination of photochemistry and fluorescence spectroscopy, including studies addressing different extents of light-matter coupling.
[1] B. Finkler et al., Photochem. Photobiol. Sci. 2014, 13, 548;[2] B. Finkler et al., Photochem. Photobiol. Sci. 2016, 15, 1544. [3] C. Spies et al., Phys.Chem.Chem.Phys. 2013, 15, 19893. [4] A. Grandjean et al., J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2021, 12, 1683. [5] N. Sülzner et al., ChemPhotoChem 2022, 6, e202200041. [6] M. Vester et al J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2015, 6, 1149. [7] M. Vester et al., Phys.Chem.Chem.Phys. 2016, 18, 10281.