Terrylene in p-terphenyl: a novel single crystalline system for single molecule spectroscopy at low temperatures

Abstract

Terrylene in p-terphenyl represents a promising novel single crystalline system for optical spectroscopy of single impurity molecules at low temperatures. The optical spectra of terrylene in p-terphenyl show four origins in absorption and emission, indicating four crystalline sites. In one of the sites saturated fluorescence count rates of up to 600000 s −1 were measured for single terrylene molecules. From a measurement of the fluorescence autocorrelation function for single terrylene molecules we could determine the populating and depopulating rates of the triplet state. Using the very small populating rate the triplet quantum yield was calculated to be only ~ 10 −5.