Femtosecond OH bending dynamics of water nanopools confined in reverse micelles

The relaxation of OH bend excitations of H2O confined in reverse micelles is studied by femtosecond broadband pump-probe spectroscopy for the two ionic systems dioctyl sodium sulfosuccinate (AOT) and dioleoylphosphatidylcholine (DOPC) and for the nonionic tetraethylene glycol dodecyl ether (Brij-30). In the ionic AOT/DOPC reverse micelles, the OH bending lifetime T1 decreases from T1 > 615 fs for a 3:1 ratio of water and AOT/DOPC molecules (w0 = 3) to T1 = 345 fs for a 16:1 ratio (w0 = 16). In contrast, H2O in Brij-30 reverse micelles shows a much shorter T1 = 400 fs at w0 = 2 which decreases to T1 = 250 fs at w0 = 8. OH bend relaxation proceeds mainly via librational overtones of the bend-excited water molecules with a rate correlating with the energy mismatch between the v = 1 OH bend state and the librational overtone. In the ionic systems, the lower librational frequencies at small w0 result in a larger mismatch and longer T1 times. In the nonionic case, the w0-independent librational frequencies with a small energy mismatch lead to shorter T1 times. For w0 ≥ 8, the energy flow into the first hydration shell of the bend-excited molecules makes an additional contribution to the relaxation rate in all systems.