SPATIAL-DISTRIBUTION OF PROBES IN A MICELLE - EFFECTS ON THE ENERGY-TRANSFER TIME-RESOLVED MEASURABLES

A general model for dipole-dipole energy transfer in micellar systems is discussed with special reference to the effects of spatial distribution of the chromophores on the overall fluorescence decay kinetics. It is shown that a micelle with a probe molecule involved can be characterized by a unified physical quantity, a hydrophobic potential H(r), which is defined as the work required to bring the probe from the aqueous solution to a given spatial position r within the micelle. This provides an adequate description of the intramicellar probe distribution. The pair-distance distribution function, responsible for the energy transfer observables, is determined using the characteristic functions of the distributions of donor and acceptor molecules with the associated H-potentials. Some analytical solutions for the distance distribution in spherical geometry together with the appropriate expressions for the donor fluorescence decay are shown and discussed briefly.