INTERMICELLAR MOBILITY OF PROBE AND QUENCHER IN REVERSE MICELLES STUDIED BY FLUORESCENCE QUENCHING

Simultaneous analysis of the fluorescence decay surface obtained from the quenching of sodium 1-pyrene-sulfonate by N-tetradecylpyridinium c hloride and sodium iodide in the reverse micellar system of N-benzyl,N ,N-dimethyltetradecylammonium um chloride in toluene with pentanol as a cosurfactant is applied to investigate intermicellar migration of pr obe and quencher. The previously reported general fluorescence quenchi ng model for monodisperse micelles is used within the framework of the global analysis with reference convolution. The results indicate the presence of fast intermicellar mobility of. reactants during the excit ed-state lifetime of the probe. The rate constants of intermicellar mo bility become higher than the diffusion-controlled limit in a collisio n process of micelles at a water-to-surfactant molar ratio w > 16, ind ependent of the quencher used. This fact is ascribed to the clustering of the reverse micelles. The average number of micelles per cluster a nd the cluster aggregation number are estimated from the data obtained by fluorescence quenching.