Proton transfer of excited 7-azaindole in reverse-micellar methanol nanopools: even faster than in bulk methanol

The methanol-catalyzed double-proton transfer of photoexcited 7-azaindole in the free cores of solvation-restricted reverse micelles takes place on the time scale of 90 ps, even shorter than in bulk methanol. This anomalous rate increase with a large kinetic isotope effect of 5 experimentally proves the widely discussed two-step model for the overall reaction of solvent-mediated proton transfer. On the other hand, the molecules in the bound layers and in the headgroup layers relax in 900 and 6000 ps, respectively, without going through proton transfer. The tautomerization and the relaxation of excited 7-azaindole can be exploited to probe the nanopools of methanol reverse micelles.