Decay Pathways of Thymine Revisited

Pilles, Bert M.; Maerz, Benjamin; Chen, Jinquan; Bucher, Dominik B.; Gilch, Peter; Kohler, Bern; Zinth, Wolfgang; Fingerhut, Benjamin P. and Schreier, Wolfgang J. (2018): Decay Pathways of Thymine Revisited. In: Journal of Physical Chemistry A, Vol. 122, No. 21: pp. 4819-4828

Abstract

The decay of electronically excited states of thymine (Thy) and thymidine 5'-monophosphate (TMP) was studied by time-resolved UV/vis and IR spectroscopy. In addition to the well-established ultrafast internal conversion to the ground state, a so far unidentified UV-induced species is observed. In D2O, this species decays with a time constant of 300 ps for thymine and of 1 ns for TMP. The species coexists with the lowest triplet state and is formed with a comparably high quantum yield of about 10% independent of the solvent. The experimentally determined spectral signatures are discussed in the light of quantum chemical calculations of the singlet and triplet excited states of thymine.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Physics
• Research Centers: Center for Integrated Protein Science Munich (CIPSM)
• Subjects: 500 Science > 540 Chemistry; 500 Science > 530 Physics
• ISSN: 1089-5639
• Language: English