Complete Monitoring of Coherent and Incoherent Spin Flip Domains in the Recombination of Charge-Separated States of Donor-Iridium Complex-Acceptor Triads

The spin chemistry of photoinduced charge-separated (CS) states of three triads comprising one or two triarylamine donors, a cyclometalated iridium complex sensitizer and a naphthalene diimide (NDI) acceptor, was investigated by transient absorption spectroscopy in the ns−μs time regime. Strong magnetic-field effects (MFE) were observed for two triads with a phenylene bridge between iridium complex sensitizer and NDI acceptor. For these triads, the lifetimes of the CS states increased from 0.6 μs at zero field to 40 μs at about 2 T. Substituting the phenylene by a biphenyl bridge causes the lifetime of the CS state at zero field to increase by more than 2 orders of magnitude (τ = 79 μs) and the MFE to disappear almost completely. The kinetic MFE was analyzed in the framework of a generalized Hayashi–Nagakura scheme describing coherent (S, T0 ↔ T±) as well as incoherent (S, T0 ⇌ T±) processes by a single rate constant k±. The magnetic-field dependence of k± of the triads with phenylene bridge spans 2 order...