Ultrafast Excited State Dynamics in Molecular Motors: Coupling of Motor Length to Medium Viscosity

Abstract

Photochemically driven molecular motors convert the energy of incident radiation to intramolecular rotational motion. The motor molecules considered here execute four step unidirectional rotational motion. This comprises a pair of successive light induced isomerizations to a metastable state followed by thermal helix inversions. The internal rotation of a large molecular unit required in these steps is expected to be sensitive to both the viscosity of the medium and the volume of the rotating unit. In this work, we describe a study of motor motion in both ground and excited states as a function of the size of the rotating units. The excited state decay is ultrafast, highly non-single exponen..