Excited state radiative rates

The pK of tyrosine explains the absence of measurable excited-state proton transfer in water. The pK is the negative logarithm of the ratio of the deprotonation and the bimolecular reprotonation rates. Since reprotonation is diffusion-controlled, this rate will be the same for tyrosine and 2-naphthol. The difference of nearly two in their respective pK values means that the excited-state deprotonation rate of tyrosine is nearly two orders of magnitude slower than that of 2-naphthol.(26) This means that the rate of excited-state proton transfer by tyrosine to water is on the order of 105s 1. With a fluorescence lifetime near 3 ns for tyrosine, the combined rates for radiative and nonradiative processes approach 109s-1. Thus, the proton transfer reaction is too slow to compete effectively with the other deactivation pathways. 

The energy stored in an excited state is dissipated by the unimolecular radiative and radiationless relaxations. For strongly allowed electronic transitions, Strickler and Berg have obtained an expression for the rate constant of the excited-state radiative decay (Equation 6.67).31... 

The rates of radiationless transitions between electronic states of porphyrins and their derivatives play a dominant role in their photochemistry because they are the major decay channels of the electronically excited states. Radiative channels, such as fluorescence, rarely exceed 10% of the overall decay rate constant at room temperature. The lifetimes of the lowest electronic states of free-base porph3nins and closed-shell metalloporphyrins vary by more than 10 orders of magnitude with the nature of the substituents. The understanding of such variations is essential to design and control the photochemistry of porphyrins and justifies an incursion on the fundamentals of radiationless transitions. 

Recent work by Lim and coworkers [11,12] on small thiones of C, and Cjv excited state symmetry has clearly demonstrated the symmetry requirements of vibronicaUy induced radiationless transitions. In the low pressure gas phase, Cjv molecules such as thioformaldehyde, HjCS, exhibit both strong Sj - Sq fluorescence and strong Tj - Sq phosphorescence. These molecules therefore exhibit rates of S, - Sq internal conversion and Tj - Sq intersystem crossing that are small in comparison with the excited state radiative decay rates, despite the fact that the density of states in Sq is sufficiently large that the molecule s radiationless transitions should fall into the statistical limit case. On the other hand similar thiones of C, excited state symmetry exhibit small quantum... 

Once the excited molecule reaches the S state it can decay by emitting fluorescence or it can undergo a fiirtlier radiationless transition to a triplet state. A radiationless transition between states of different multiplicity is called intersystem crossing. This is a spin-forbidden process. It is not as fast as internal conversion and often has a rate comparable to the radiative rate, so some S molecules fluoresce and otliers produce triplet states. There may also be fiirther internal conversion from to the ground state, though it is not easy to detemiine the extent to which that occurs. Photochemical reactions or energy transfer may also occur from S. ... 

Knowledge of photoiaduced electroa-transfer dyaamics is important to technological appUcations. The quantum efficiency, ( ), ie, the number of chemical events per number of photons absorbed of the desired electron-transfer photoreaction, reflects the competition between rate of the electron-transfer process, eg, from Z7, and the radiative and radiationless decay of the excited state, reflected ia the lifetime, T, of ZA ia abseace ofM. Thus,... 

The luminescence of an excited state generally decays spontaneously along one or more separate pathways light emission (fluorescence or phosphorescence) and non-radiative decay. The collective rate constant is designated k° (lifetime r°). The excited state may also react with another entity in the solution. Such a species is called a quencher, Q. Each quencher has a characteristic bimolecular rate constant kq. The scheme and rate law are... 

To get a rough idea of the rate of radiationless transition from higher excited states, consider the quantum yield of fluorescence from that state as the ratio of nonradiative (t ) to radiative (t ) lifetimes as follows ... 

Chemiluminescence is believed to arise from the 2Bj and the 2B2 electronic states, as discussed above for the reaction of NO with ozone [17]. The primary emission is in a continuum in the range =400-1400 nm, with a maximum at =615 nm at 1 torr. This emission is significantly blue-shifted with respect to chemiluminescence in the NO + 03 reaction (Xmax = 1200 nm), as shown in Figure 2, owing to the greater exothermicity available to excite the N02 product [52], At pressures above approximately 1 torr of 02, the chemiluminescence reaction becomes independent of pressure with a second-order rate coefficient of 6.4 X 10 17 cm3 molec-1 s-1. At lower pressures, however, this rate constant decreases and then levels off at a minimum of 4.2 X 1(T18 cm3 molec-1 s-1 near 1 mtorr, and the emission maximum blue shifts to =560 nm [52], These results are consistent with the above mechanism in which the fractional contribution of (N02 ) to the emission spectrum increases as the pressure is decreased, therefore decreasing the rate at which (N02 ) is deactivated to form N02. Additionally, the radiative lifetime and emission spectrum of excited-state N02 vary with pressure, as discussed above for the NO + 03 reaction [19-22],... 

Fluorescence Lifetimes. The fluorescence decay times of TIN in a number of solvents (11.14.16.18.19), low-temperature glasses (12.) and in the crystalline form (15.) have been measured previously. Values of the fluorescence lifetime, Tf, of the initially excited form of TIN and TINS in the various solvents investigated in this work are listed in Table III. Values of the radiative and non-radiative rate constants, kf and knr respectively, are also given in this table. A single exponential decay was observed for the room-temperature fluorescence emission of each of the derivatives examined. This indicates that only one excited-state species is responsible for the fluorescence in these systems. 

This case is shown in Fig. 10.6c and d where through absorption of light a photohole in the vb and a photoelectron in the cb are formed. The probability that interfacial electron transfer takes place, i.e. that a thermodynamically suitable electron donor is oxidized by the photohole of the vb depends (i) on the rate constant of the interfacial electron transfer, kET, (ii) on the concentration of the adsorbed electron donor, [Rads]. and (iii) on the rate constants of recombination of the electron-hole pair via radiative and radiationless transitions,Ykj. At steady-state of the electronically excited state, the quantum yield, Ox, ofinterfacial electron-transfer can be expressed in terms of rate constants ... 

In solution at room temperature, non-radiative de-excitation from the triplet state Ti, is predominant over radiative de-excitation called phosphorescence. In fact, the transition Ti —> S0 is forbidden (but it can be observed because of spin-orbit coupling), and the radiative rate constant is thus very low. During such a slow process, the numerous collisions with solvent molecules favor intersystem crossing and vibrational relaxation in So-... 

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