Intramolecular Singlet Fission Through a Coherently Coupled Excimer-like Intermediate

Singlet Fission (SF) into two triplets offers exciting avenues for high-efficiency photovoltaics and optically initializable qubits. While the chemical space of SF chromophores is ever-expanding, the mechanistic details of electronic-nuclear motions that dictate the photophysics are unclear. Rigid SF dimers with well-defined orientations are necessary to decipher such details. Here, using polarization-controlled white-light two-dimensional and pump-probe spectroscopies, we investigate a new class of contorted naphthalenediimide dimers, recently reported to have a favorable intramolecular SF (iSF) pathway. 2D cross-peaks directly identify the two Davydov components of the dimer along with strongly wavelength-dependent TT1 formation kinetics depending on which Davydov component is excited, implicating a coherently coupled intermediate that mediates iSF. Enhanced quantum beats in the TT1 photoproduct suggest that inter-chromophore twisting and ruffling motions drive the ~200 fs evolution towards an excimer-like intermediate and its subsequent ~2 ps relaxation to the TT1 photoproduct. Polarization anisotropy directly tracks electronic motion during these steps and reveals surprisingly minimal electronic reorientation with significant singlet-triplet mixing throughout the nuclear evolution away from the Franck-Condon geometry towards relaxed TT1. The observations of coherent excimer-like intermediate and significant singlet-triplet mixing throughout the iSF process need to be carefully accounted for in the synthetic design and electronic structure models for iSF dimers aiming for long-lived high-spin correlated triplets.