https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2017-80306-4
Regular Article
Merocyanine–spiropyran relaxation processes
1
Department of General and Theoretical Physics, Sumy State University,
2, Rymsky-Korsakov St.,
40007
Sumy, Ukraine
2
Departament de Química Física i Inorgànica, Universitat Rovira i Virgili,
C. Marcel.lí Domingo s/n,
Tarragona
43007, Spain
3
Department of Theoretical and Applied Physics, Aerospace Institute, National Aviation University,
1, Kosmonavt Komarov Ave.,
03680
Kyiv, Ukraine
4
Department of Modeling of Complex Systems and Applied Physics, Sumy State University,
2, Rymsky-Korsakov St.,
40007
Sumy, Ukraine
a e-mail: olha.kovalenko@ssu.edu.ua
Received:
4
May
2017
Received in final form:
3
November
2017
Published online: 25
January
2018
In the paper mechanisms of merocyanine–spiropyran transformation were investigated. It was shown that in dark conditions for such transformation it is necessary to overcome the potential barrier with height of ~0.6 eV. A barrierless transformation into the spiropyran molecule is possible due to the rotation of the phenyl moiety of the merocyanine molecule by 90∘ relative to the plane of the molecule. It was proved that a 90∘ orientation of moieties in the merocyanine molecule is achievable only in a photochemical way because in S1 state of the molecule energy of the potential surface is lowered by rotation the phenyl moiety relative to its plane.
Key words: Molecular Physics and Chemical Physics
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2018