Energy dissipation in multichromophoric single dendrimers

Single-molecule spectroscopy of well-chosen dendritic multichro-mophoric systems allows investigation of fundamental photophysi-cal processes such as energy or electron transfer in much greater detail than the respective ensemble measurements. In dendrimers with multiple chromophores, energy hopping and transfer to the chromophore with the energetically lowest S1 state was observed. If more than one chromophore is in an excited state in one molecule, annihilation, either singlet-triplet or singlet-singlet, can occur. In the latter case, a higher singlet state is populated opening new deactivation pathways. In the presence of an electron donor, reversible electron transfer could be observed, and the rate constants of forward and backward electron transfer were estab-lished. The value of these rate constants fluctuates time-correlated with the rotational motion of the dendrimer arms and the mobility of the embedding matrix