QUENCHING AND PHOTOBLEACHING OF EXCITED POLYCYCLIC AROMATIC HYDROCARBONS BY CARBON TETRACHLORIDE AND CHLOROFORM IN MICELLAR SYSTEMS

—Aromatic hydrocarbons incorporated into cetyltrimethylammonium chloride (CTACl) or sodium dodecylsulphate (SDS) micelles are efficiently quenched and photobleached by carbon tetrachloride. Similar results were obtained employing chloroform, but the efficiency of this compound as a quencher is nearly 10³ times smaller than that of carbon tetrachloride.
Bimolecular quenching constants, with the quencher concentration given in moles per liter of micellar pseudophase, have been evaluated and compared with those obtained in homogeneous solutions. For slow processes, the values obtained would indicate that the polarity sensed by the probe depends both upon the probe and the surfactant. For diffusionally controlled processes (i.e. quenching of biphenyl), bimolecular quenching constants are considerably smaller in the micellar pseudophase. For these processes the pseudo-first-order quenching rate constants are larger in SDS than in CTACl micelles. This effect is partly due to the smaller size of the SDS micelle but also is a consequence of a lower "microviscosity" of these micelles.