This study reports the results of experiments that probed how solvents affect the recombination efficiency (FcP) of geminate radical cage pairs. The macroviscosity of solvents has traditionally been used to make quantitative predictions about FcP, but experiments reported here show that FcP varies dramatically for solvent systems with identical macroviscosities. Experiments show that FcP correlates with the solvent microviscosity: five different solvent systems (consisting of a solvent and a structurally similar viscogen) were examined, and FcP was the same for all five solvent systems at any particular microviscosity. The translational diffusion coefficient of the radicals (measured by DOSY) in the solvent system was used to define the microviscosity of the solvent system.

This study reports a method for correlating the radical recombination efficiencies (F cP ) of geminate radical cage pairs to the properties of the solvent. Although bulk viscosity (macroviscosity) is typically used to predict or interpret radical recombination efficiencies, the work reported here shows that microviscosity is a much better parameter. The use of microviscosity is valid over a range of different solvent system types, including nonpolar, aromatic, polar, and hydrogen bonding solvents. In addition, the relationship of F cP to microviscosity holds for solvent systems containing mixtures of these solvent types. The microviscosities of the solvent systems were straightforwardly determined by measuring the diffusion coefficient of an appropriate probe by NMR DOSY spectroscopy. By using solvent mixtures, selective solvation was shown to not affect the correlation between F cP and microviscosity. In addition, neither solvent polarity nor radical rotation affects the correlation between F cP and the microviscosity.

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Chlorella vulgaris, Chlorophyll Fluorescence Quenching, Green Algae, Molecular Oxygen Molecular oxygen can act as a collisional quencher of the singlet excited state of chlorophyll a. This effect is well described for chlorophyll a in various solvents but not for chlorophyll a in the antenna complexes of photosynthetic organisms. We studied the chlorophyll fluorescence decay of Chlorella vulgaris cells under different oxygen concentrations but did not find any evidence for quenching by oxygen.