Excimers pyrene

Frank et al. [29] studied the effect of hydrophobic interaction by comparing the fluorescent properties of PMAA/PEO and with those of PAA/PEO . Here PEO denotes pyrene end-labeled PEO. Figure 3 shows the intensity ratio le/Im of inframolecular excimer pyrene for PMAA/PEO (9200) and PAA/PEO (9200). It is seen that when added, PMAA more markedly reduces intramolecular excimer formation in PEO than does PAA. This difference is thought to be due to a stronger abihty of PMAA to combine PEO and the consequent suppression of intramolecular cychzation of PEO. 

Additional support for this disassembly mechanism was obtained by monitoring the release of the pyrene tail units by fluorescence spectroscopy. The confined proximity of the pyrene units in the dendritic molecule results in formation of excimers. The excimer fluorescence generates a broad band at a wavelength of 470 nm in the emission spectrum of dendron 31 (Fig. 5.25). Upon the release of the pyrene units from the dendritic platform, the 470 nm band disappeared from... 

The best evidence for a charge-transfer exciplex (hetero excimer) has been provided by Thomaz and Stevens.<148,149) They note a reduction in fluorescence yield of pyrene with increasing heavy-atom concentration and proposed the following set of reactions to explain their results ... 

Sahoo D, Narayanaswami V, Kay CM, Ryan RO (2000) Pyrene excimer fluorescence a spatially sensitive probe to monitor lipid-induced helical rearrangement of apolipophorin III. Biochemistry 39 6594-6601... 

Okamoto A, Ichiba T, Saito I (2004) Pyrene-labeled oligodeoxynucleotide probe for detecting base insertion by excimer fluorescence emission. J Am Chem Soc 126 8364—8365... 

Langenegger SM, Haner R (2004) Excimer formation by interstrand stacked pyrenes. Chem Commun 2792-2793... 

Masuko M, Ohtani H, Ebatal K, Shimadzu A (1998) Optimization of excimer-forming two-probe nucleic acid hybridization method with pyrene as a fluorophore. Nucleic Acids Res 26 5409-5416... 

Different aromatic hydrocarbons (naphthalene, pyrene and some others) can form excimers, and these reactions are accompanying by an appearance of the second emission band shifted to the red-edge of the spectrum. Pyrene in cyclohexane (CH) at small concentrations 10-5-10-4 M has structured vibronic emission band near 430 nm. With the growth of concentration, the second smooth fluorescence band appears near 480 nm, and the intensity of this band increases with the pyrene concentration. At high pyrene concentration of 10 2 M, this band belonging to excimers dominates in the spectrum. After the act of emission, excimers disintegrate into two molecules as the ground state of such complex is unstable. 

Lehrer, S. S. (1997). Intramolecular pyrene excimer fluorescence A probe of proximity and protein conformational change. Fluorescence Spectroscopy 278, 286-295. 

CDs can form complexes with stoichiometries different from 1 1. Stopped-flow experiments were employed to study the binding dynamics of a 2 2 complex between pyrene and y-CD.196 Both, 1 1 and 2 2 complexes are formed and the 2 2 complex exhibits excimer-like emission. The association rate constant for the 2 2 complex was found to be 6 x 107M-1 s-1, while the dissociation rate constant was 73 s-1. These values correspond to a decrease of up to 5 orders of magnitude when compared to the dynamics for the 1 1 complex. 

Lochmuller and coworkers used the formation of excimer species to answer a distance between site question related to the organization and distribution of molecules bound to the surface of silica xerogels such as those used for chromatography bound phases. Pyrene is a flat, poly aromatic molecule whose excited state is more pi-acidic than the ground state. An excited state of pyrene that can approach a ground state pyrene within 7A will form an excimer Pyr +Pyr (Pyr)2. Monomer pyrene emits at a wavelength shorter than the excimer and so isolated versus near-neighbor estimates can be made. In order to do this quantitatively, these researchers turned to measure lifetime because the monomer and excimer are known to have different lifetimes in solution. This is also a way to introduce the concept of excited state lifetime. 

C.H. Lochmiiller, A.S. Colborn, M.L. Hunnicutt and J.M. Harris, Bound pyrene excimer photophysics and the organization and distribution of reaction sites on silica, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 106 (1984) 4077. 

Fluorescence Rise and Decay Curves. Both monomer and excimer fluorescence decay curves of the unirradiated film are nonexponential and the excimer fluorescence shows a slow rise component. This behavior is quite similar to the result reported for the PMMA film doped with pyrene. (23) A delay in the excimer formation process was interpreted as the time taken for the two molecules in the ground state dimer to form the excimer geometry. Dynamic data of the ablated area observed at 375 no (monomer fluorescence) and 500 nm (exciner fluorescence) are shown in Figure 5. When the laser fluence increased, the monomer fluorescence decay became slower. The slow rise of the excimer fluorescence disappeared and the decay became faster. 

Figure 6. Comparison of excimer intensity for free and tagged pyrene in novolac films. Film composition ( ) free pyrene in novolac (A) pyrene tagged novolac (o) 19.6 mol% pyrene tagged novolac mixed with untagged novolac. The inset is an expansion of the graph for low pyrene concentrations.

In a film, however, molecular mobility is severely limited, so that excimer fluorescence must arise mainly from pairs or groups of pyrene molecules that were approximately in the excimer configuration when the film was cast. Thus, the intensity of the excimer emission is also an indication of the local concentration of pyrene in the cast film. If the pyrene aggregates, we expect that the excimer fluorescence would increase with aggregation. This system can be used to look at the aggregation of very low concentrations of a small molecule dye in a polymer film, and potentially detect molecular aggregation before it would be observable by other tech-... 

In order to study the molecular dynamics of the outer segments of a dendrimer, one pyrene moiety was selectively and covalently attached to one dendron of poly(aryl ester) dendrimers by Adams (in total three pyrene molecules per dendrimer) [24]. The fluorescence decay of pyrene in the THF solution of the labeled dendrimers provided details of the pyrene excimer formation, such as the excimer formation rate, the excimer decomposition rate constant and the equilibrium constant of the excimer formation. These parameters were utilized to evaluate the diffusional mobility of the dendrimer branches. 

The explanation for this behaviour is that at the higher concentration of pyrene an excited-state dimer, or excimer, is formed through an interaction between the electronically-excited pyrene (M ) and the ground-state pyrene (M) ... 

The structure of the pyrene excimer is sandwich-shaped, with the distance between the planes of the two rings being of the order of 0.35nm (Figure 6.3). 

Kim SK, Bok JH, Bartsch RA et al (2005) A fluoride-selective PCT chemosensor based on formation of a static pyrene excimer. Org Lett 7 4839-4842... 

Bodenant B, Fages F, Delville MH (1998) Metal-induced self-assembly of a pyrene-tethered hydroxamate ligand for the generation of multichromophoric supramolecular systems. The pyrene excimer as switch for iron(III)-driven intramolecular fluorescence quenching. J Am Chem Soc 120 7511-7519... 

Yang JS, Lin CS, Hwang CY (2001) Cu2+-induced blue shift of the pyrene excimer emission a new signal transduction mode of pyrene probes. Org Lett 3 889-892... 

Schazmann B, Alhashimy N, Diamond D (2006) Chloride selective calix[4]arene optical sensor combining urea functionality with pyrene excimer transduction. J Am Chem Soc 128 8607-8614... 

A first generation poly(amido amine) dendrimer has been functionalized with three calyx[4]arenes, each carrying a pyrene fluorophore (4) [30]. In acetonitrile solution the emission spectrum shows both the monomer and the excimer emission band, typical of the pyrene chromophore. Upon addition of Al3+ as perchlorate salt, a decrease in the excimer emission and a consequent revival of the monomer emission is observed. This can be interpreted as a change in the dendrimer structure and flexibility upon metal ion complexation that inhibits close proximity of pyrenyl units, thus decreasing the excimer formation probability. 1H NMR studies of dendrimer 4 revealed marked differences upon Al3+ addition only in the chemical shifts of the CH2 protons linked to the central amine group, demonstrating that the metal ion is coordinated by the dendrimer core. MALDI-TOF experiments gave evidence of a 1 1 complex. Similar results have been obtained for In3+, while other cations such as Ag+, Cd2+, and Zn2+ do not affect the luminescence properties of... 

Quenching of pyrene by excimer formation (Py + Py —> (PyPy) —> 2Py) (see Section 4.4.1) is widely used for the determination of micellar aggregation numbers for new surfactant systems. An example is given in Figure B4.2.1. 

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