Power-Law Blinking in the Fluorescence of Single Organic Molecules

Hoogenboom, Jacob P. and Hernando, Jordi and Dijk van, Erik M.H.P. and Hulst van, Niek F. and Garcia-Parajo, Maria F. (2007) Power-Law Blinking in the Fluorescence of Single Organic Molecules. ChemPhysChem, 8 (6). pp. 823-833. ISSN 1439-4235

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Abstract:	The blinking behavior of perylene diïmide molecules is investigated at the single-molecule level. We observe long-time scale blinking of individual multi-chromophoric complexes embedded in a poly(methylmethacrylate) matrix, as well as for the monomeric dye absorbed on a glass substrate at ambient conditions. In both these different systems, the blinking of single molecules is found to obey analogous power-law statistics for both the on and off periods. The observed range for single-molecular power-law blinking extends over the full experimental time window, covering four orders of magnitude in time and six orders of magnitude in probability density. From molecule to molecule, we observe a large spread in off-time power-law exponents. The distributions of off-exponents in both systems are markedly different whereas both on-exponent distributions appear similar. Our results are consistent with models that ascribe the power-law behavior to charge separation and (environment-dependent) recombination by electron tunneling to a dynamic distribution of charge acceptors. As a consequence of power-law statistics, single molecule properties like the total number of emitted photons display non-ergodicity.
Item Type:	Article
Research Group:	Optical Sciences (OS)
Link to this item:	http://purl.utwente.nl/publications/72248
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/cphc.200600783
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