Rate of excitation energy transfer between fluorescent dyes and nanoparticles

Because of the sensitivity of the rate of Coulomb interaction induced long range resonance energy transfer (RET) on the distance between the donor (D) and the acceptor (A) molecules, the technique of FRET (fluorescence resonance energy transfer) is popularly termed as “spectroscopic ruler” and is increasingly being used in many areas of biological and material science. For example, the phenomenon is used to monitor the in vivo separation between different (bio)polymers/units of (bio)polymers and hence the dynamics of various biomolecular processes. In this work, we examine the distance and the orientation dependence of RET in three different systems: (i) between a conjugated polymer and a fluorescent dye, (ii) between a nanometal particle (NMP) and a fluorescent dye and (iii) between two NMP. We show that in all the three cases, the rate of RET follows a distance dependence of d−σ where exponent σ approaches 6 at large distance d (Förster type dependence) but has a value varying from 3–4 at short to intermediate distances.