Investigations of energy migration in an organic dendrimer macromolecule for sensory signal amplification.

The issue of macromolecular exciton delocalization length and fluorescence sensing of energetic materials is investigated and modeled from results of nonlinear optical and time-resolved spectroscopy. By using two- and three-photon absorption techniques the fluorescence quenching effects of an organic dendrimer for sensing TNT were carried out. The Stern-Volmer plots for the set of dendrimers were examined and a large quenching constant for the dendrimer G4 was obtained (1400 M(-1)). The quenching constant was found to increase with the dendrimer generation number. The mechanism for the enhanced sensitivity of the dendrimer system was examined by probing the exciton dynamics with femtosecond fluorescence up-conversion. Fluorescence lifetime measurements revealed a multicomponent relaxation that varied with dendrimer generation. Fluorescence anisotropy decay measurements were used to probe the exciton migration length in these dendrimer systems and for the large structure the excitation migration area covers approximately 20 units. All of these results were used in a model that describes the exciton localization length with the fluorescence quenching strength. The use of time-resolved techniques allows for a closer and more detailed description of the mechanism of sensory amplification in organic macromolecules.