TIME-RESOLVED PHOTOACOUSTIC CALORIMETRY OF TRYPTOPHAN IN WATER and ORGANIC SOLVENTS

Abstract –Very little has been done in the direct study of nonradiative decays of Trp, indole and derivatives, in spite of their relatively low fluorescence quantum yields. Time-resolved photoacoustic calorimetry is an ideal technique for this kind of study: it is very sensitive in the detection of small amounts of heat released and, in principle, allows a broad band of temporal resolution. The photoacoustic apparatus used for our measurements offers a temporal window between 10 ns and 10 μs. The analysis of the waveforms, based on a particular deconvolution method, simultaneously gives the fraction of energy released and the associated lifetime. In a broad sense, time-resolved photoacoustic spectroscopy can be seen as a complementary method to traditional radiative techniques such as static, time-resolved fluorescence and flash photolysis. The present work presents studies of Trp in different solvents in order to acquire new information about the interaction of this chromophore with solvents. From our measurements the high sensitivity of Trp to solvents is confirmed. The formation of complexes is evident at the excited state (exciplexes), between the chromophore and one or more molecules of solvent. These exciplexes are characterized by having an energy different from that of the singlet and triplet of Trp. Moreover, photoacoustic measurements detect, in water, the presence of another electronic state, which seems to have characteristics similar to a triplet-like state reported in other work.