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- Fluorescence properties (1)
- Optical solids (1)
- Precursor chemistry (1)
- Sol-gel (1)
Two fluorescent dyes were incorporated into sol-gel derived SiO2 matrices. The dye was added to SiO2 precursors of different degrees of pre-condensation and the spectroscopic properties of the immobilized dye were measured at various aging and drying stages of the resulting gels. The significant influence of the processing parameters on the spectroscopic properties is manifested in the relative intensity of a second red shifted emission band (550560 nm), which was observed besides the typical coumarin emission band (495 nm). The appearance of this long wavelength emission might be attributed to dye aggregation or to other reactions with the ambient matrix forced by micro porosity phenomena.
The short- and long-term structural evolution and aging of solgel materials prepared under mild conditions are studied by fluorometry, dynamic light scattering (DLS), 29Si NMR and gravimetry. In combination with the first, a newly developed donoracceptor-substituted fluorescent probe with two acidophilic sites of different strength and topology is introduced. Its performance in detecting changes in parameters such as polarity, proticity, and pore volume on the microscopic scale is compared to two other dyes and to the macroscopic changes revealed by DLS, NMR and gravimetry. At early stages of the solgel process, fluorometry, DLS and NMR reveal similar changes which are typical of the structural evolution of SiO2 sols having different synthesis parameters. During later times of sol aging, DLS and NMR reflect the growth of the network and indicate that all sols approach similar structural equilibria. Fluorometry supports these findings by signalling a gradual decrease in mobile species with high proton activity. The formation of the spanning cluster upon gelation is strongly evident only from DLS results while the local environment of the fluorophore remains largely unchanged. However, the fluorescent dye is able to report microscopic changes even during long-term aging. Drying of the gels with a pronounced contraction of solvated pores is readily observable by fluorometry and gravimetry. During the late reaction stages, the fluorescence properties of the tailor-made dye are still sensitive toward the environment.