Influence of temperature on phosphorescence spectra of Pd-porphine in Shpol’skii matrices

We have studied the temperature dependence of the radiative deactivation of the Pd-porphine triplet states in Shpol’skii matrices in the temperature range 1.2–210 K. A substantial transformation of the phosphorescence spectra is observed as the temperature increases and is due to the inclusion of thermally activated Pd-porphine states in the radiative deactivation processes. The activation energy E_a of these Pd-porphine states is measured in matrices of n-octane and n-nonane. The splitting of the lowest quasidegenerate triplet state ΔE(T₂−T₁) is determined for planar and distorted conformations of the Pd-porphine macrocycle in the n-octane matrix as 40 and 57 cm⁻¹, respectively. The ability to use the temperature dependence of the phosphorescence properties of Pd-porphine to fabricate molecular thermometers for the low-temperature range is analyzed. __________ Translated from Zhurnal Prikladnoi Spektroskopii, Vol. 74, No. 4, pp. 460–464, July–August, 2007.