Florescence Quenching within Lithium Salt-Added Ionic Liquid

J Phys Chem B. 2018 May 17;122(19):5106-5113. doi: 10.1021/acs.jpcb.8b02723. Epub 2018 May 4.

Abstract

Salt-added ionic liquid media have emerged as a versatile alternative to the conventional electrolytes in several applications. A lithium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide (LiTf2N)-added ionic liquid 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ([emim][Tf2N]) system up to a LiTf2N mole fraction ( xLiTf2N) of 0.40 is investigated using a fluorophore-quencher pair of pyrene-nitromethane in the 298.15-358.15 K temperature range. Excited-state intensity decay of pyrene fits best to a single-exponential decay function irrespective of the concentration of nitromethane, xLiTf2N, and the temperature. Pyrene lifetimes decrease with increasing temperature at a given xLiTf2N with lifetime becoming more sensitive to temperature at higher LiTf2N concentration. The pyrene-nitromethane fluorophore-quencher pair follows a simplistic Stern-Volmer formulation, indicating the quenching to be purely dynamic in nature affording dynamic quenching constants ( KD) in the process. KD along with the estimated bimolecular quenching rate constant ( kq) within LiTf2N-added [emim][Tf2N] first increases with increasing LiTf2N until xLiTf2N ∼ 0.10, decreasing monotonically thereafter until xLiTf2N = 0.40. The decrease in KD and kq with increasing xLiTf2N is attributed to the exponentially increased dynamic viscosity with increasing xLiTf2N of the ([emim][Tf2N] + LiTf2N) system. The initial increase in KD and kq is controlled by the structural changes within the system as LiTf2N is added to [emim][Tf2N]. It is proposed that the presence of [Li(Tf2N)2]- anionic clusters stabilizes the partial positive charge that develops on excited pyrene during the electron/charge transfer to nitromethane during the quenching process. While the Stokes-Einstein formulation is not followed by the ([emim][Tf2N] + LiTf2N) system in general, it is found to be obeyed at fixed xLiTf2N. The role of structural changes within the system beyond viscosity increase on the quenching process is amply highlighted.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't