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Informing the design of amino-acid fingerprinting reagents using density functional theory
- Publication Year :
- 2020
- Publisher :
- Loughborough University, 2020.
-
Abstract
- Improving the effectiveness of forensic fingerprinting reagents (FFRs) has been a challenge in the field of forensic chemistry for the previous four decades. Fluorescent methods offer significant improvement over their non-fluorescent counter parts and the focus of several previous studies have been to develop new fluorescent FFRs via a synthetic trial-and-error process. In this study, a computational Density Functional Theory (DFT) approach is used to work towards predicting the fluorescence activity of a system in an attempt to contribute to the development process. Aiming to inform the fluorescent FFR design process, this study asks: Is time-dependant DFT (TDDFT) able to replicate non-fluorescent behaviour of existing FFRs by identifying non-radiative features along their excited state potential energy surface (PES)? Reporting the validation of TDDFT as a predictive tool, this study presents the accurate calculation of optical properties belonging to products of the existing FFRs, 2,2-dihydroxyindane-1,3-dione (ninhydrin) and 1,8-diazafluoren-9-one (DFO), and has proposed chemical structures of the products of 1,2-indanedione and 2-hydroxy-1,4-napthoquinone (lawsone). Investigation of the PES representing a mechanism related to excited state intramolecular proton transfer (ESIPT) in the ninhydrin product, DYDA, and the DFO product revealed non-radiative characteristics in the former, indicating that an internal 10° dihedral rotation of DYDA leads to a non-radiative relaxation mechanism. The relevance of these findings with respect to the solid-state structures is also offered through analysis of the crystal packing in previously reported X-ray crystal structures. It is recommended that further investigation be carried out on a larger set of chromophoric systems to further validate the presented workflow, validation of which will offer an informative predictive tool to be utilised in a product-to-reactant approach to the design of new fluorescent FFRs.
- Subjects :
- Computational Chemistry
Forensic chemistry
fingerprint detection
Density Functional Theory calculations
density functional theory
Photochemistry
fluorescence
Fluorescence emission
Time Dependent DFT
Time Dependent Density Functional Theory Study
Gaussian calculations
Ninhydrin
DFO
indanedione
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- Database :
- British Library EThOS
- Publication Type :
- Dissertation/ Thesis
- Accession number :
- edsble.830144
- Document Type :
- Electronic Thesis or Dissertation
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.26174/thesis.lboro.14380892.v1