Time-Resolved Study of Light-Induced Ground State Proton Transfer from Acid Medium to 4-Nitrophenolate

In the present work, we study the transient laser-induced formation of 4-nitrophenolate (4-NPO^-) in the ground electronic state and subsequent proton transfer reaction with acetic acid and water with numerical calculations and laser flash photolysis. We employ the Debye-Smoluchowski spherically-symmetric diffusion model of photoacid proton transfer to determine experimental conditions for studying thermally activated chemical reactions in the ground electronic state. Numerically calculated protonation and deprotonation probabilities for 4-NPO^- and 4-nitrophenol (4-NPOH) in both ground and excited states showed the feasibility of efficiently producing the ground state anion in the photoacid cycle. We performed laser flash photolysis measurements of 4-NPOH to characterize the photo-initiated ground state protonation and deprotonation rate constants of 4-NPO^-/4-NPOH as a function of acetic acid, pH, temperature and viscosity. Overall, the work presented here shows a simple way to study fast competing bimolecular proton transfer reactions in non-equilibrium conditions in the ground electronic state (GSPT).