Femtosecond spectroscopic study of relaxation processes of three amino-substituted coumarin dyes in methanol and dimethyl sulfoxide

Time-resolved fluorescence spectra of three amino-substituted coumarin dyes have been recorded in methanol and dimethyl sulfoxide using the fluorescence upconversion technique with an apparatus response function of approximate to 200 fs fwhm. The three fluorinated coumarins are the 7-amino-4-trifluoromethylcoumarin (C151), the 7-diethylamino-4-trifluoromethylcoumarin (C35), and the rigidified aminocoumarin with a julolidine structure (C153). The dynamic Stokes shifts are found to be dominated by an ultrafast component with a characteristic time shorter than the present time resolution of approximate to 50 fs. The dynamic Stokes shifts are compared to estimations based on a "Kamlet and Taft" analysis of steady-state data in 20 solvents. It is found that the ultrafast component can be assigned mainly to intramolecular relaxation. The influences of photoinduced changes of solute-solvent hydrogen bonds on the observed spectral shifts are discussed. The breaking of hydrogen bonds at the amino group is very fast in both solvents and embedded in the ultrafast solvent inertial relaxation, while the reformation of hydrogen bonds at the carbonyl group is believed to occur on the 10-20 ps time scale in the hydrogen bond donating (HBD) solvent methanol. However, it is impossible to unambiguously correlate a particular experimental time constant with the breaking or the formation of a hydrogen bond.