@article{KubinGuoKrolletal.2018,
  author    = {Kubin, Markus and Guo, Meiyuan and Kroll, Thomas and Loechel, Heike and Kallman, Erik and Baker, Michael L. and Mitzner, Rolf and Gul, Sheraz and Kern, Jan and F{\"o}hlisch, Alexander and Erko, Alexei and Bergmann, Uwe and Yachandra, Vittal and Yano, Junko and Lundberg, Marcus and Wernet, Philippe},
  title     = {Probing the oxidation state of transition metal complexes},
  series = {Chemical science},
  volume    = {9},
  journal   = {Chemical science},
  number    = {33},
  publisher = {Royal Society of Chemistry},
  address   = {Cambridge},
  issn      = {2041-6520},
  doi       = {10.1039/c8sc00550h},
  pages     = {6813 -- 6829},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {Transition metals in inorganic systems and metalloproteins can occur in different oxidation states, which makes them ideal redox-active catalysts. To gain a mechanistic understanding of the catalytic reactions, knowledge of the oxidation state of the active metals, ideally in operando, is therefore critical. L-edge X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) is a powerful technique that is frequently used to infer the oxidation state via a distinct blue shift of L-edge absorption energies with increasing oxidation state. A unified description accounting for quantum-chemical notions whereupon oxidation does not occur locally on the metal but on the whole molecule and the basic understanding that L-edge XAS probes the electronic structure locally at the metal has been missing to date. Here we quantify how charge and spin densities change at the metal and throughout the molecule for both redox and core-excitation processes. We explain the origin of the L-edge XAS shift between the high-spin complexes Mn-II(acac)(2) and Mn-III(acac)(3) as representative model systems and use ab initio theory to uncouple effects of oxidation-state changes from geometric effects. The shift reflects an increased electron affinity of Mn-III in the core-excited states compared to the ground state due to a contraction of the Mn 3d shell upon core-excitation with accompanied changes in the classical Coulomb interactions. This new picture quantifies how the metal-centered core hole probes changes in formal oxidation state and encloses and substantiates earlier explanations. The approach is broadly applicable to mechanistic studies of redox-catalytic reactions in molecular systems where charge and spin localization/delocalization determine reaction pathways.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{JayNorellEckertetal.2018,
  author    = {Jay, Raphael M. and Norell, Jesper and Eckert, Sebastian and Hantschmann, Markus and Beye, Martin and Kennedy, Brian and Quevedo, Wilson and Schlotter, William F. and Dakovski, Georgi L. and Minitti, Michael P. and Hoffmann, Matthias C. and Mitra, Ankush and Moeller, Stefan P. and Nordlund, Dennis and Zhang, Wenkai and Liang, Huiyang W. and Kunnus, Kristian and Kubicek, Katharina and Techert, Simone A. and Lundberg, Marcus and Wernet, Philippe and Gaffney, Kelly and Odelius, Michael and F{\"o}hlisch, Alexander},
  title     = {Disentangling Transient Charge Density and Metal-Ligand Covalency in Photoexcited Ferricyanide with Femtosecond Resonant Inelastic Soft X-ray Scattering},
  series = {The journal of physical chemistry letters},
  volume    = {9},
  journal   = {The journal of physical chemistry letters},
  number    = {12},
  publisher = {American Chemical Society},
  address   = {Washington},
  issn      = {1948-7185},
  doi       = {10.1021/acs.jpclett.8b01429},
  pages     = {3538 -- 3543},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {Soft X-ray spectroscopies are ideal probes of the local valence electronic structure of photocatalytically active metal sites. Here, we apply the selectivity of time resolved resonant inelastic X-ray scattering at the iron L-edge to the transient charge distribution of an optically excited charge-transfer state in aqueous ferricyanide. Through comparison to steady-state spectra and quantum chemical calculations, the coupled effects of valence-shell closing and ligand-hole creation are experimentally and theoretically disentangled and described in terms of orbital occupancy, metal-ligand covalency, and ligand field splitting, thereby extending established steady-state concepts to the excited-state domain. pi-Back-donation is found to be mainly determined by the metal site occupation, whereas the ligand hole instead influences sigma-donation. Our results demonstrate how ultrafast resonant inelastic X-ray scattering can help characterize local charge distributions around catalytic metal centers in short-lived charge-transfer excited states, as a step toward future rationalization and tailoring of photocatalytic capabilities of transition-metal complexes.},
  language  = {en}
}