Abstract
Electron transfer (ET) is one of the most important elementary processes that takes place in fundamental aspects of biology, chemistry, and physics. In this review, we discuss recent research on single molecule probes based on ET. We review some applications, including the dynamics of glass-forming systems, surface binding events, interfacial ET on semiconductors, and the external field-induced dynamics of polymers. All these examples show that the ET-induced changes of fluorescence trajectory and lifetime of single molecules can be used to sensitively probe the surrounding nano-environments.
Highlights
Nanoscience, which is concerned with the dynamic, structure and properties of materials with dimensions ranging from a few nanometers to less than 100 nanometers, has attracted considerable interest in recent years
We review the main uses of single molecules in studies of nano-environment dynamics, by measuring the change of fluorescence trajectory and lifetime induced by Electron transfer (ET)
It is found that altered fluorescence trajectories and fluorescence lifetimes induced by ET fulfill the rules of sensitive probes to reveal dynamic disorder in nano-environments
Summary
Nanoscience, which is concerned with the dynamic, structure and properties of materials with dimensions ranging from a few nanometers to less than 100 nanometers, has attracted considerable interest in recent years. Short off-duration-time blinking events lasting on the order of microseconds to a few milliseconds are recognized in single molecule experiments [27] and have been found to be attributable to the intersystem crossing from a singlet excited state to a triplet dark state. They proposed that the blinking can be attributed to dye radical ions formed by photoinduced ET from or to the environment, which suggests that the blinking behavior of a single organic molecule can be a sensitive probe of its immediate environment Fluorescence lifetime is another ET-induced characteristic of single molecules, which is an intrinsic property of a fluorophore and does not dependent on the wavelength of excitation, duration of light exposure, one or multiphoton excitation, and the method of measurement. We focus on some applications, including dynamics of glass-forming systems, surface binding events, ET between single dye molecules and semiconductors, and the external field-induced dynamics of polymers
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