Control Mechanisms of Photoisomerization in Protonated Schiff Bases
- 12 March 2013
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Chemical Society (ACS) in The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters
- Vol. 4 (6), 1005-1011
- https://doi.org/10.1021/jz400133u
Abstract
We performed ab initio excited-state molecular dynamics simulations of a gas-phase photoexcited protonated Schiff base (C1–N2═C3–C4═C5–C6) to search for control mechanisms of its photoisomerization. The excited molecule twists by ∼90° around either the N2C3 bond or the C4C5 bond and relaxes to the ground electronic state through a conical intersection with either a trans or cis outcome. We show that a large initial distortion of several dihedral angles and a specific normal vibrational mode combining pyramidalization and double-bond twisting can lead to a preferential rotation of atoms around the C4C5 bond. We also show that selective pretwisting of several dihedral angles in the initial ground state thermal ensemble (by analogy to a protein pocket) can significantly increase the fraction of photoreactive (cis → trans) trajectories. We demonstrate that new ensembles with higher degrees of control over the photoisomerization reaction can be obtained by a computational directed evolution approach on the ensembles of molecules with the pretwisted geometries.Keywords
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