Study of Organized Media Using Time-Resolved Fluorescence Spectroscopy

Many photophysical processes which occur on an ultrafast time scale in ordinary liquids become significantly retarded in organized assemblies, by two to three orders of magnitude. Recently many groups have applied ultrafast laser spectroscopy and theoretical methods to elucidate this dramatic phenomenon. Although the implications of this phenomenon in biology and chemistry are not yet fully understood, it has been demonstrated that ultrafast time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy is a very powerful tool to study the microscopic properties of the organized assemblies and that water or other liquids confined inside these assemblies are fundamentally different from the corresponding liquid in bulk.