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A setup for resonant inelastic soft x-ray scattering on liquids at free electron laser light sources
(2012)
We present a flexible and compact experimental setup that combines an in vacuum liquid jet with an x-ray emission spectrometer to enable static and femtosecond time-resolved resonant inelastic soft x-ray scattering (RIXS) measurements from liquids at free electron laser (FEL) light sources. We demonstrate the feasibility of this type of experiments with the measurements performed at the Linac Coherent Light Source FEL facility. At the FEL we observed changes in the RIXS spectra at high peak fluences which currently sets a limit to maximum attainable count rate at FELs. The setup presented here opens up new possibilities to study the structure and dynamics in liquids.
Anti-Stokes resonant x-ray Raman scattering for atom specific and excited state selective dynamics
(2016)
Ultrafast electronic and structural dynamics of matter govern rate and selectivity of chemical reactions, as well as phase transitions and efficient switching in functional materials. Since x-rays determine electronic and structural properties with elemental, chemical, orbital and magnetic selectivity, short pulse x-ray sources have become central enablers of ultrafast science. Despite of these strengths, ultrafast x-rays have been poor at picking up excited state moieties from the unexcited ones. With time-resolved anti-Stokes resonant x-ray Raman scattering (AS-RXRS) performed at the LCLS, and ab initio theory we establish background free excited state selectivity in addition to the elemental, chemical, orbital and magnetic selectivity of x-rays. This unparalleled selectivity extracts low concentration excited state species along the pathway of photo induced ligand exchange of Fe(CO)(5) in ethanol. Conceptually a full theoretical treatment of all accessible insights to excited state dynamics with AS-RXRS with transform-limited x-ray pulses is given-which will be covered experimentally by upcoming transform-limited x-ray sources.
Hydration shells around ions are crucial for many fundamental biological and chemical processes. Their local physicochemical properties are quite different from those of bulk water and hard to probe experimentally. We address this problem by combining soft X-ray spectroscopy using a liquid jet and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations together with ab initio electronic structure calculations to elucidate the water ion interaction in a MgCl2 solution at the molecular level. Our results reveal that salt ions mainly affect the electronic properties of water molecules in close vicinity and that the oxygen K-edge X-ray emission spectrum of water molecules in the first solvation shell differs significantly from that of bulk water. Ion-specific effects are identified by fingerprint features in the water X-ray emission spectra. While Mg2+ ions cause a bathochromic shift of the water lone pair orbital, the 3p orbital of the Cl- ions causes an additional peak in the water emission spectrum at around 528 eV.
We prove the hitherto hypothesized sequential dissociation of Fe(CO)(5) in the gas phase upon photoexcitation at 266 nm via a singlet pathway with time-resolved valence and core-level photoelectron spectroscopy with an x-ray free-electron laser. Valence photoelectron spectra are used to identify free CO molecules and to determine the time constants of stepwise dissociation to Fe(CO)(4) within the temporal resolution of the experiment and further to Fe(CO)(3) within 3 ps. Fe 3p core-level photoelectron spectra directly reflect the singlet spin state of the Fe center in Fe(CO)(5), Fe(CO)(4), and Fe(CO)(3) showing that the dissociation exclusively occurs along a singlet pathway without triplet-state contribution. Our results are important for assessing intra- and intermolecular relaxation processes in the photodissociation dynamics of the prototypical Fe(CO)(5) complex in the gas phase and in solution, and they establish time-resolved core-level photoelectron spectroscopy as a powerful tool for determining the multiplicity of transition metals in photochemical reactions of coordination complexes. Published by AIP Publishing.
While ubiquitous, the making and breaking of hydrogen bonds in solution is notoriously difficult to study due to the associated complex changes of nuclear and electronic structures. With the aim to reduce the according uncertainty in correlating experimental observables and hydrogen-bond configurations, we combine the information from proximate methods to study the N-H center dot center dot center dot O hydrogen bond in solution. We investigate hydrogen-bonding of the N-H group of N-methylaniline with oxygen from liquid DMSO and acetone with infrared spectra in the N-H stretching region and X-ray absorption spectra at the N K-edge. We experimentally observe blue shifts of the infrared stretching band and an X-ray absorption pre-edge peak when going from DMSO to acetone. With ab initio molecular dynamics simulations and calculated spectra, we qualitatively reproduce the experimental observables but we do not reach quantitative agreement with experiment. The infrared spectra support the notion of weakening the N-H center dot center dot center dot O hydrogen bond from DMSO to acetone. However, we fail to theoretically reproduce the measured shift of the X-ray absorption pre-edge peak. We discuss possible shortcomings of the simulation models and spectrum calculations. Common features and distinct differences with the O-H center dot center dot center dot O hydrogen bond are highlighted, and the implications for monitoring hydrogen-bond breaking in solution are discussed.
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.
Determining covalent and charge-transfer contributions to bonding in solution has remained an experimental challenge. Here, the quenching of fluorescence decay channels as expressed in dips in the L-edge X-ray spectra of solvated 3d transition-metal ions and complexes was reported as a probe. With a full set of experimental and theoretical ab initio L-edge X-ray spectra of aqueous Cr3+, including resonant inelastic X-ray scattering, we address covalency and charge transfer for this prototypical transition-metal ion in solution. We dissect local atomic effects from intermolecular interactions and quantify X-ray optical effects. We find no evidence for the asserted ultrafast charge transfer to the solvent and show that the dips are readily explained by X-ray optical effects and local atomic state dependence of the fluorescence yield. Instead, we find, besides ionic interactions, a covalent contribution to the bonding in the aqueous complex of ligand-to-metal charge-transfer character.
In resonant inelastic soft x-ray scattering (RIXS) from molecular and liquid systems, the interplay of ground state structural and core-excited state dynamical contributions leads to complex spectral shapes that partially allow for ambiguous interpretations. In this work, we dissect these contributions in oxygen K-edge RIXS from liquid alcohols. We use the scattering into the electronic ground state as an accurate measure of nuclear dynamics in the intermediate core-excited state of the RIXS process. We determine the characteristic time in the core-excited state until nuclear dynamics give a measurable contribution to the RIXS spectral profiles to tau(dyn) = 1.2 +/- 0.8 fs. By detuning the excitation energy below the absorption resonance we reduce the effective scattering time below sdyn, and hence suppress these dynamical contributions to a minimum. From the corresponding RIXS spectra of liquid methanol, we retrieve the "dynamic-free" density of states and find that it is described solely by the electronic states of the free methanol molecule. From this and from the comparison of normal and deuterated methanol, we conclude that the split peak structure found in the lone-pair emission region at non-resonant excitation originates from dynamics in the O-H bond in the core-excited state. We find no evidence that this split peak feature is a signature of distinct ground state structural complexes in liquid methanol. However, we demonstrate how changes in the hydrogen bond coordination within the series of linear alcohols from methanol to hexanol affect the split peak structure in the liquid alcohols. (C) 2014 Author(s). All article content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
We describe how inversion symmetry separation of electronic state manifolds in resonant inelastic soft X-ray scattering (RIXS) can be applied to probe excited-state dynamics with compelling selectivity. In a case study of Fe L3-edge RIXS in the ferricyanide complex Fe(CN)63−, we demonstrate with multi-configurational restricted active space spectrum simulations how the information content of RIXS spectral fingerprints can be used to unambiguously separate species of different electronic configurations, spin multiplicities, and structures, with possible involvement in the decay dynamics of photo-excited ligand-to-metal charge-transfer. Specifically, we propose that this could be applied to confirm or reject the presence of a hitherto elusive transient Quartet species. Thus, RIXS offers a particular possibility to settle a recent controversy regarding the decay pathway, and we expect the technique to be similarly applicable in other model systems of photo-induced dynamics.