Photoprocesses in Microaggregates

Despite the potential complexity of microaggregate-containing systems, photophysical probe techniques have made important fundamental contributions to our understanding of the structure and properties of the aggregates and of the dynamics and reactivity of small molecules added to the system. By appropriate choice of the probe and quencher, one can often reduce the behavior of such microheterogeneous systems to that of a simple pseudophase system, amenable to study by steady-state fluorescence techniques. Rather general photophysical probe-based methods are now available for measuring equilibrium constants for solute incorporation and exchange selectivity coefficients for counterion binding to various types of microaggregates, including micelles, vesicles, and reverse micelles.