Abstract

At high levels of optical illumination, multichromophore arrays can exhibit a novel form of resonance energy transfer involving the coupling of two excited donor chromophores (A and A') and one neighbouring acceptor chromophore (B) in its electronic ground state.¹ This trichromophore effect is the subject of an investigation into the dependence on the mutual positions and orientations of the participating chromophores. Employing methods similar to those well-known in bimolecular photophysics, comparisons are made between pairwise resonance energy transfer and the novel three-body analogue, with counterparts to the conventional orientation factor identified. By the scrutiny of molecular architectures based on linear configurations (either A-B-A' or A-A'-B), the interplay of the orientation factors is analysed (see Figure 1).

© 2000 IEEE