Liquid-Crystalline Solvents as Mechanistic Probes. 10. Dynamics of Intramolecular Quenching of Pyrenyl Fluorescence in the Liquid-Crystalline and Isotropic Phases of a Cholesteric Solvent1

Abstract

The effect of cholesteric order in a 59.5/15.6/24.9 (w/w/w) mixture of cholesteryl oleate/cholesteryl nonanoate/cholesteryl chloride (CM) on the intramolecular fluorescence quenching of l,3-bis(l-pyrenyl) propane (P3P) has been explored. A comparison with fluorescence quenching of N,N-dimethyl-4-[3-(l-pyrenyl)propyl]aniline (P3D) in CM is made. From the Arrhenius activation parameters for quenching in the cholesteric and isotropic phases, it is concluded that the motions which take the ground state conformers of P3P to their quenching transition state are nearly impervious to macroscopic CM mesophase order: in the cholesteric phase, E'_a = 10.5±0.4 kcal mol^?1 and ΔS^? = 1 ± 1 eu; in the isotropic phase, E'_a = 10.0 ± 0.2 kcal mol^?1 and ΔS^? = 0 ± 0.5 eu. An explanation of these results is advanced.