EFFICIENT NUMERICAL SIMULATIONS OF THE TIME-DEPENDENCE OF ELECTRONIC-ENERGY TRANSFER IN POLYMERS .2. SHORT-RANGE TRANSFER AND FORSTER TRAPPING

Calculations have been carried out of the time dependence of a donor excited state in the presence of down-chain electronic energy transfer between polymer segments with simultaneous trapping by a Förster dipole–dipole mechanism. The donor excited-state survival probability (fluorescence decay) has been analyzed in terms of an effective dimensionality with the objective of testing explicit conformational models for polymers. It has been found that long-range trapping obscures the fractal dimensionality characteristics of these systems. A discussion is presented concerning the sensitivity of methods for extracting conformational properties of polymers from fluorescence decay measures. © 1990, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.