Regulation of the Collisional Self-Quenching of Fluorescence in Clay/Porphyrin Complex by Strong Host-Guest Interaction

This paper proposes a novel methodology to improve noncollisional photochemical reactions such as Forster resonance energy transfer on solid surfaces. Since an excited guest molecule densely adsorbed on the solid surfaces is quenched by an unfavorable interaction between guests in general, the photochemical reactions such as electron and energy transfers tend to be inefficient compared to those in homogeneous systems. In this work, the mechanism of unfavorable quenching process of dyes on the clay surface as a typical solid surface for the photochemical energy transfer was systematically investigated by using a series of porphyrin derivatives. As a result, it was found that the quenching rate constants of excited guest dye determined by the time-resolved fluorescence measurements correlated well with the strengths of coulombic interaction between host and guest. The strong coulombic interaction should suppress the mobility and collision frequency of guests on the clay surface; thus, the collision of guest molecules was revealed as the origin of unfavorable quenching for photochemical reactions on the clay surface. According to this principle, we will be able to construct efficient photochemical reaction systems without any quenching process, such as efficient energy transfers toward an artificial light-harvesting system. In fact, we have already realized almost 100% energy transfer by the suppression of quenching process on the clay surface (e.g., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2011, 133, 14280-14286).