<title>Intramolecular electronic energy transfer in bichromophoric molecular macrocyclic systems</title>

Abstract

The structures and spectral properties of several bichromophoric molecules, suitable for optical data processing, are presented. The bichromophoric molecules are composed of an aromatic ring connected by two methylene chains to an (alpha) -diketone moiety. Both the absorption and emission spectra of these compounds can be attributed to a superposition of the individual spectra of the separate chromophores. The critical transfer radia for electronic energy transfer from the aromatic (donor) chromophore to the (alpha) -diketone (acceptor) chromophore was calculated from the spectral overlap between the fluorescence spectrum of the aromatic ring with the absorption spectrum of the (alpha) -diketone chromophore. The results show that this series of molecules is well suited for a mechanistic study of short-range intramolecular electronic energy transfer (intra-EET). The temperature and the molecular structure dependence of the intra-EET efficiency in this series was measured and analyzed for both singlet-singlet and triplet-triplet routes. The results show that the transfer efficiency is strongly temperature and structure dependent, indicating that exchange interaction is responsible for intra-EET between close chromophores in a bichromophoric molecule. The relative contributions of interchromophoric distance and that of the relative orientation of the two chromophores to exchange interaction are discussed.