Two-Dimensional Electronic Spectroscopy Reveals Dynamics and Mechanisms of Solvent-Driven Inertial Relaxation in Polar BODIPY Dyes

In this work, we demonstrate the use of two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy (2DES) to study the mechanism and time scale of the femtosecond Stokes shift dynamics in molecules characterized by intramolecular charge transfer, such as distyryl-functionalized boron dipyrromethene (BODIPY) molecules. The obtained results demonstrate that 2DES allows clear and direct visualization of the phenomenon. The analysis of the 2D data in terms of 2D frequency-frequency decay associated maps provides indeed not only the time scale of the relaxation process but also the starting and the final point of the energy flow and the associated reorganization energy, identified by looking at the coordinates of a negative signature below the diagonal. The sensitivity of the 2DES technique to vibrational coherence dynamics also allowed the identification of a possible relaxation mechanism involving specific interaction between a vibrational mode of the dye and the solvent.