Fluorescence excitation spectra aromatic hydrocarbons

It should not be assumed that all simple mixtures can be analyzed by either of the above techniques. Consider the aromatic hydrocarbon pyrene in the presence of an equal amount of anthracene. The ultraviolet absorption (and fluorescence excitation) spectrum of anthracene completely overlaps that of pyrene. It can be... 

In these systems, a high-energy intermediate excites a suitable fluorophore, which then emits its characteristic fluorescence spectrum consequently, they are termed indirect or sensitized chemiluminescence. The most common analytical application has been as a postcolumn reaction detector for liquid chromatography. Various fluorescent analytes (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and polycyclic aromatic amines) and compounds derivatized using dansyl chloride, fluorescamine, or o-phthalaldehyde have been determined with sub-femtomole detection limits. 

At low enough temperatures vibrational fine structure of aromatic chromophores may be well resolved, especially if they are embedded in a suitable matrix such as argon or N2, which is deposited on a transparent surface at 15 K. This matrix isolation spectroscopy77166 may reveal differences in spectra of conformers or, as in Fig. 23-16, of tautomers. In the latter example the IR spectra of the well-known amino-oxo and amino-hydroxy tautomers of cytosine can both be seen in the matrix isolation IR spectrum. Figure 23-16 is an IR spectrum, but at low temperatures electronic absorption spectra may display sharp vibrational structure. For example, aromatic hydrocarbons dissolved in n-heptane or n-octane and frozen often have absorption spectra, and therefore fluorescence excitation spectra, which often consist of very narrow lines. A laser can be tuned to excite only one line in the absorption spectrum. For example, in the spectrum of the carcinogen ll-methylbenz(a)anthrene in frozen octane three major transitions arise because there are three different environments for the molecule. Excitation of these lines separately yields distinctly different emission spectra.77 Likewise, in complex mixtures of different hydrocarbons emission can be excited from each one at will and can be used for estimation of amounts. Other related methods of energy-... 

Perhaps the simplest optically controlled switches are single molecules embedded in a solid host matrix. These systems consist of an amorphous, polycrystalline, or crystalline film doped with dilute concentrations of impurity molecules. The most commonly used dopant molecules are fused polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and porphyrins. In addition to facile sample preparation, these planar molecules absorb in the visible to near IR regions of the spectrum, possess large extinction coefficients in both the ground and excited states, and have high fluorescence quantum yields. 

Mason and Smith (1969) found that for a series of mono- and bicyclic aromatic hydrocarbons the changes in the fluorescence spectrum with acidity reflected the ground state protonation reaction. The p Sj )-values calculated for benzene, toluene, naphthalene, azulene, and indolizine do not correspond to observable processes since the rate of protonation is too slow to compete with deactivation of the Sj state. Photochemical deuterium and tritium exchange experiments in 1 mole dm-3 perchloric acid indicate that the radiative deactivation rate of an electronically excited aromatic hydrocarbon is faster than the rate of protonation by a factor >10s. 

This description of the relative spectral linewidths of the lowest excited toi states applies to the whole family of aromatic hydrocarbons. It also applies to the manifold of triplet jui states. In the case of benzene, Burland, Castro and Robinson 24> and Burland and Castro 25> have used phosphorescence and delayed fluorescence excitation techniques, respectively, to measure the absorption spectrum of the lowest triplet state, 3Biu of ultrapure crystals at 4 K. The origin is located at 29647 cm-1. Unlike all the earlier studies on the lowest singlet triplet absorption spectrum, this was not an 02 perturbation experiment. Here widths of less than 3 cm-1 were obtained. This result should be compared with the much broader bands 150-1 observed for the suspected second triplet ZE i in 5 cm crystals of highly purified benzene 26>. The two triplet states are separated by 7300 cm"1. 

It is known that a new component appears in the emission spectrum of many aromatic hydrocarbons with increasing concentration [147]. This new fluorescent component is ascribed to excimers which are complexes of an electronically excited molecule with an identical molecule in the ground state. In these complexes molecules are parallel at a distance of about 0.3 nm. Excimers only exist in the excited state after de-excitation the two partners repel each other. Therefore no corresponding change is observed in the absorption spectrum. The kinetic scheme just presented must be complemented by the following steps ... 

Identification of the Fluorescent Species. Figure 2 compares the fluorescence excitation spectra of the polymers with the absorption spectrum of a simple ,/3-unsaturated carbonyl compound (pent-3-ene-2-one) (13). The three spectra are very similar. Figure 2 shows also that the fluorescence from the polymers in the region 300-400 nm cannot be caused by the presence of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons such as naphthalene as postulated earlier by Carlsson and Wiles (13). Furthermore, as shown below, the excitation spectrum also differs significantly from that of a fully saturated aldehyde or ketone. 

Both the Forster and the Dexter energy transfer mechanisms require spectral overlap of the donor emission spectrum and the acceptor absorption spectrum. However, energy transfer is known to occur even in the absence of spectral overlap, resulting in effective quenching of excited states. As an example, we can cite the quenching of the fluorescence of aromatic hydrocarbons by dienes, a process which involves thermal deactivation of an excited state encounter complex, or exciplex, between D and A (Eq. (3.7)) ... 

When possible, it can be advantageous to take advantage of an analyte s intrinsie fluorescence. Ideally, native fluorescence would exhibit a high quantum yield and could be excited with readily available excitation sources. Unfortunately, few compounds exhibit fluorescence in the spectral range of the most common lasers, that is, the visible portion of the spectrum. Nonetheless, there are some compounds that fluoresce upon excitation with visible light. Examples include many pharmaceutical compounds,porphyrins, and vitamin B6 metabolites. In contrast, excitation below 300 nm excites quite a number of biomolecules, including proteins and peptides containing Tyr, Tip, or Phe residues, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, as well as nucleosides and DNA. For... 

Aromatic hydrocarbons such as pyrene have also been employed as a luminescence probe of polarity and microviscosity in a variety of organized assemblies (109). Pyrene is a good excimer-forming probe due to the long lifetime of fluorescence and formation of excited-state dimers (excimers) at low concentration. Figure 9 shows an example pyrene luminescence spectrum. The ratio of excimer to monomer fluorescence intensity is often utilized as a measure of pyrene mobility and proximity. The vibronic fine structure of the pyrene monomer is sensitive... 

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