We have measured the constants of collisional quenching and depolarization of the fluorescence of a number of derivatives of 2,5-diphenyloxazole and 2-phenylbenzoxazole in a gas phase by oxygen. The probabilities of quenching and orientation randomization of a single collision are determined. It is shown that quenching is significantly influenced by the electron-donor properties of substituents.Keywords: oxygen quenching, collisional depolarization of fluorescence, 2,5-diphenyloxazole, 2-phenylbenzoxazole.
Introduction.Oxygen is the key element of energetics in animate nature. The high oxidizing ability of oxygen can manifest itself negatively in naturally occurring physical-chemical transformations, causing degradation and aging of organic materials. Free radicals (peroxide and hydroxyl ones, superoxide anion radical) formed with participation of molecular oxygen and singlet oxygen are capable of modifying vital cell components, which can both provoke diseases and suppress them (photodynamic therapy).It is known that the primary physical-chemical activation of the neutral molecule of oxygen -formation of singlet oxygen -can occur when the electronic states of organic molecules are quenched by it. However, despite the fact that the quenching of excited electronic states of organic molecules by oxygen was discovered and became an object of invstigation as early as at the beginning of the past century, its efficiency, just as the accompanying generation of singlet oxygen, is still unpredictable for lack of knowledge of the quenching mechanism [1]. A burst of practical interest in the phenomenon was observed in developing dye lasers, where the quenching of the singlet excited state reduced the laser effect or even hindered it, while the quenching of the triplet one was, on the contrary, favorable to lasing. At present, investigations of the interaction of oxygen with excited electronic multiatomic molecules are gaining great practical urgency also in connection with the constant increase in the concentration of organic pollutants of the environment and of animate and inanimate nature. The formation of chemically more active excited electronic states of multiatomic molecules under conditions of natural or artificial light irradiation occurs in nature usually in the presence of atmospheric oxygen, which in many cases exerts a marked effect on the direction of photochemical transformations of pollutants. For example, many aromatic hydrocarbons, involved in a chain of photochemical transformations in the earth's atmosphere, are transformed into health-hazardous toxic or carcinogenic compounds [2].In investigating oxygen quenching in solutions, the solvent cell effect smoothes out the differences in the values of high quenching efficiencies, since the duration of oxygen action is given in this case by the time of its being in contact with an excited molecule. If the time of interaction necessary for quenching becomes less than the contact time specified by diffusion, the observed effectiveness of quenching will always be...