Photoinduced electron transfer and geminate recombination in the group head region of micelles

A pump-probe spectroscopic study of photoinduced forward electron transfer and geminate recombination between donors and acceptors located in the head group regions of micelles is presented. The hole donor is octadecyl-rhodamine B (ODRB) and the hole acceptor is N,N-dimethyl-aniline (DMA). The experiments are conducted as a function of the DMA concentration in the dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide and tetradecyltrimethylammonium bromide micelles. In spite of the fact that the absorptions of both the ODRB radical and ground state bleach spectrally overlap with the ODRB excited state absorption, a procedure that makes it possible to determine the geminate recombination dynamics is presented. These experiments are the first to measure the dynamics of geminate recombination in micelles, and the experiments have two orders of magnitude better time resolution than previous studies of forward transfer. The experimental data are compared to statistical mechanics theoretical calculations of both the forward transfer and the geminate recombination. The theory includes important aspects of the topology of the micelle and the diffusion of the donor-acceptors in the micelle head group region. A semiquantitative but nonquantitative agreement between theory and experiments is achieved.