Microsolvation in superfluid helium droplets studied by the electronic spectra of six porphyrin derivatives and one chlorine compound

After almost two decades of high resolution molecular spectroscopy in superfluid helium droplets, the understanding of microsolvation is still the subject of intense experimental and theoretical research. According to the published spectroscopic work including microwave, infrared, and electronic spectroscopy, the latter appears to be particularly promising to study microsolvation because of the appearance of pure molecular transitions and spectrally separated phonon wings. Instead of studying the very details of the influence of the helium environment for one particular dopant molecule as previously done for phthalocyanine, the present study compares electronic spectra of a series of non-polar porphyrin derivatives when doped into helium droplets consisting of 10(4)-10(5) helium atoms. Thereby, we focus on the helium-induced fine structure, as revealed most clearly at the corresponding electronic origin. The interpretation and the assignment of particular features obtained in the fluorescence excitation spectra are based on additional investigations of dispersed emission spectra and of the saturation behavior. Besides many dopant-specific results, the experimental study provides strong evidence for a particular triple peak feature representing the characteristic signature of helium solvation for all seven related dopant species. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.