Affiliation: | 1. Van't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands;2. Van't Hoff Institute for Molecular Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands;3. Institute of Physics, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands |
Abstract: | Inspired by ideas from NMR, we have developed Infrared Diffusion-Ordered Spectroscopy (IR-DOSY), which simultaneously characterizes molecular structure and size. We rely on the fact that the diffusion coefficient of a molecule is determined by its size through the Stokes–Einstein relation, and achieve sensitivity to the diffusion coefficient by creating a concentration gradient and tracking its equilibration in an IR-frequency resolved manner. Analogous to NMR-DOSY, a two-dimensional IR-DOSY spectrum has IR frequency along one axis and diffusion coefficient (or equivalently, size) along the other, so the chemical structure and the size of a compound are characterized simultaneously. In an IR-DOSY spectrum of a mixture, molecules with different sizes are nicely separated into distinct sets of IR peaks. Extending this idea to higher dimensions, we also perform 3D-IR-DOSY, in which we combine the conformation sensitivity of femtosecond multi-dimensional IR spectroscopy with size sensitivity. |