Fluorescence techniques for studying tautomerism

Fluorescence techniques are especially suitable for studying NH tautomerism since they offer a variety of experimental approaches in which the emitting reactants and/or products can be monitored, either in steady state or in a time-resolved maimer. These methods carry information about both the photophysical properties of a fluorescing molecule and the kinetics of tautomerization processes. Fluorescence studies reveal uUrahigh sensitivity to reporting molecules, high speed of response, and high spatial resolution. 

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The vast majority of papers devoted to tautomerization dynamics deal with ESIPT reactions. Since Weller s suggestion that the large Stokes shift he measured for salicyhc acid fluorescence was caused by rapid proton transfer in the excited state [62], and the development of techniques to study this on a femtosecond timescale, the field has blossomed. Most of the 2000 papers on tautomerization dynamics is on ESIPT, from both an experimental and a theoretical point of view. The number of compounds exhibiting ESIPT is far too large to discuss here. It ranges from molecules as simple as malonaldehyde to systems as complicated as 3-hydroxyflavone or 2-(2 -hydroxyphenyl)benzothiazole. In particular, substituted salicylic acids and ortho-hydroxybenzaldehydes have attracted much attention from both experimentalists and theoreticians. Weller s idea is depicted in Figure 1.10. 

Other techniques previously described for general investigation of tautomeric equilibria (76AHC(S1)1> involve heats of combustion, relaxation times, polarography, refractive index, molar refractivity, optical rotation, X-ray diffraction, electron diffraction, neutron diffraction, Raman, fluorescence, phosphorescence and photoelectron spectroscopy, and mass spectrometry. The application of several of these techniques to tautomeric studies has been discussed in previous sections. Other results from the more important of these will be referred to later in this section. 

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