Dissociation of photochromic spiroanthrooxazine dimers in the excited state

The influence of temperature and concentration on the spectral polarization properties of the luminescence and absorption of molecules of the original form of photochromic spiroanthrooxazine (SAO) in petroleum ether and polyethylene was investigated. It was shown that the long-wave part of the absorption spectra of the molecules is formed by at least two -*-type electronic transitions, the oscillators of which are mutually orthogonal. It is suggested that the SAO molecules form dimers in nonpolar media through dipole-dipole interaction, and at high concentrations they also form higher associates. Dimers stable in the ground state dissociate when excited to the second electronic transition with a rate constant of 10¹²–10¹³ s^–1.N. N. Semenov Institute of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, 117977 Moscow. Department of the Institute of Solid-State Physics and Semiconductors, Academy of Sciences of Belarus, 211177 Vitebsk. Translated from Izvestiya Akademii Nauk, Seriya Khimicheskaya, No. 1, pp. 99–106, January, 1992.