Transition-metal complexes have long attracted interest for fundamental chemical reactivity studies and possible use in solar energy conversion. Electronic excitation, ligand loss from the metal centre, or a combination of both, creates changes in charge and spin density at the metal site that need to be controlled to optimize complexes for photocatalytic hydrogen production and selective carbon-hydrogen bond activation. An understanding at the molecular level of how transition-metal complexes catalyse reactions, and in particular of the role of the short-lived and reactive intermediate states involved, will be critical for such optimization. However, suitable methods for detailed characterization of electronic excited states have been lacking. Here we show, with the use of X-ray laser-based femtosecond resolution spectroscopy and advanced quantum chemical theory to probe the reaction dynamics of the benchmark transition-metal complex Fe(CO)₅ insolution, that the photoinduced removal of CO generates the 16-electron Fe(CO)₄ species, a homogeneous catalyst with an electron deficiency at the Fe centre, in a hitherto unreported excited singlet state that either converts to the triplet ground state or combines with a CO or solvent molecule to regenerate a penta-coordinated Fe species on a sub-picosecond timescale. This finding, which resolves the debate about the relative importance of different spin channels in the photochemistry of Fe(CO)₅ (refs 4, 16,17,18,19 and 20), was made possible by the ability of femtosecond X-ray spectroscopy to probe frontier-orbital interactions with atom specificity. We expect the method to be broadly applicable in the chemical sciences, and to complement approaches that probe structural dynamics in ultrafast processes.

Bonding of the Ni²⁺(aq) complex is investigated with an unprecedented combination of resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) measurements and ab initio calculations at the Ni L absorption edge. The spectra directly reflect the relative energies of the ligand-field and charge-transfer valence-excited states. They give element-specific access with atomic resolution to the ground-state electronic structure of the complex and allow quantification of ligand-field strength and 3d–3d electron correlation interactions in the Ni²⁺(aq) complex. The experimentally determined ligand-field strength is 10Dq = 1.1 eV. This and the Racah parameters characterizing 3d–3d Coulomb interactions B = 0.13 eV and C = 0.42 eV as readily derived from the measured energies match very well with the results from UV–vis spectroscopy. Our results demonstrate how L-edge RIXS can be used to complement existing spectroscopic tools for the investigation of bonding in 3d transition-metal coordination compounds in solution. The ab initio RASPT2 calculation is successfully used to simulate the L-edge RIXS spectra.

A new ab initio approach to the calculation of X-ray spectra is demonstrated. It combines a high-level quantum chemical description of the chemical interactions and local atomic multiplet effects. We show here calculated L-edge X-ray absorption (XA) and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering spectra for aqueous Ni²⁺ and XA spectra for a polypyridyl iron complex. Our quantum chemical calculations on a high level of accuracy in a post-Hartree–Fock framework give excellent agreement with experiment. This opens the door to reliable and detailed information on chemical interactions and the valence electronic structure in 3d transition-metal complexes also in transient excited electronic states. As we combine a molecular-orbital description with a proper treatment of local atomic electron correlation effects, our calculations uniquely allow, in particular, identifying the influence of interatomic chemical interactions versus intra-atomic correlations in the L-edge X-ray spectra.

The molecular and electronic structures of aqueous I-3 and I ions have been investigated through ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and photoelectron (PE) spectroscopy of the iodine 4d core levels. Against the background of the theoretical simulations, data from our I4d PE measurements are shown to contain evidence of coupled solute-solvent dynamics. The MD simulations reveal large amplitude fluctuations in the I-I distances, which couple to the collective rearrangement of the hydrogen bonding network around the I-3(-) ion. Due to the high polarizability of the I-3(-) ion, the asymmetric I-I vibration reaches partially dissociated configurations, for which the electronic structure resembles that of I-2 + I-. The charge localization in the I-3(-) ion is found to be moderated by hydrogen-bonding. As seen in the PE spectrum, these soft molecular vibrations are important for the electronic properties of the I-3(-) ion in solution and may play an important role in its electrochemical function.

Ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the solvation of LiI3 in four different solvents (water, methanol, ethanol, and acetonitrile) are employed to investigate the molecular and electronic structure of the I-3(-) ion in relation to X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Simulations show that hydrogen-bond rearrangement in the solvation shell is coupled to intramolecular bond-length asymmetry in the I-3(-) ion. By a combination of charge analysis and I 4d core-level XPS measurements, the mechanism of the solvent-induced distortions has been studied, and it has been concluded that charge localization mediates intermolecular interactions and intramolecular distortion. The approach involving a synergistic combination of theory and experiment probes the solvent-dependent structure of the I-3(-) ion, and the geometric structure has been correlated with the electronic structure.

We present synchrotron-based I4d photoelectron spectroscopy experiments of solutions from LiI and LiI3 in water, ethanol, and acetonitrile. The experimentally determined solvent-induced binding energy shifts (SIBES) for the monatomic I- anion are compared to predictions from simple Born theory, PCM calculations, as well as multiconfigurational quantum chemical spectral calculations from geometries obtained through molecular dynamics of solvated clusters. We show that the SIBES for I- explicitly depend on the details of the hydrogen bonding configurations of the solvent to the I- and that static continuum models such as the Born model cannot capture the trends in the SIBES observed both in experiments and in higher-level calculations. To extend the discussion to more complex polyatomic anions, we also performed experiments on I-3(-) and I-/I-3(-) mixtures in different solvents and the results are analyzed in the perspective of SIBES. The experimental SIBES values indicate that the solvation effects even for such similar anions as I- and I-3(-) can be rather different in nature.