Power-Law-Distributed Dark States are the Main Pathway for Photobleaching of Single Organic Molecules

Jacob P. Hoogenboom, Erik M. H. P. van Dijk, Jordi Hernando, Niek F. van Hulst, and María F. García-Parajó
Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 097401 – Published 26 August 2005

Abstract

We exploit the strong excitonic coupling in a superradiant trimer molecule to distinguish between long-lived collective dark states and photobleaching events. The population and depopulation kinetics of the dark states in a single molecule follow power-law statistics over 5 orders of magnitude in time. This result is consistent with the formation of a radical unit via electron tunneling to a time-varying distribution of trapping sites in the surrounding polymer matrix. We furthermore demonstrate that this radicalization process forms the dominant pathway for molecular photobleaching.

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  • Received 7 February 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.097401

©2005 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Jacob P. Hoogenboom*, Erik M. H. P. van Dijk, Jordi Hernando, Niek F. van Hulst, and María F. García-Parajó

  • Applied Optics group, Faculty of Science & Technology and MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente, P.O. Box 217, NL-7500AE Enschede, the Netherlands

  • *E-mail: j.p.hoogenboom@utwente.nl

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Issue

Vol. 95, Iss. 9 — 26 August 2005

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