Singlet Oxygen Quantum Yields: Comparing Chemical Probe and Time-Resolved Phosphorescence

Singlet oxygen ( 1 O 2 ) is an important reactive intermediate in aquatic photochemical reactions, altering the fate and transformation of pollutants. Past work has primarily quantified 1 O 2 generation in aquatic systems using the chemical probe furfuryl alcohol (FFA). An alternative method to quantify 1 O 2 is to directly observe 1 O 2 through its phosphorescence emission. While this method is receiving growing interest, there has yet to be a direct comparison of measured 1 O 2 generation efficiencies (i.e., quantum yields) between the FFA and 1 O 2 phosphorescence methods. In this study, we compared the 1 O 2 quantum yields (Φ Δ ) between these two methods for a broad set of samples, including small molecule sensitizers, dissolved organic matter (DOM) isolates, and pyrogenic DOM (PyDOM). FFA and 1 O 2 phosphorescence methods yielded significantly different Φ Δ values for many small molecule sensitizers and DOM/PyDOM samples. For DOM/PyDOM, the 1 O 2 phosphorescence method yielded 1.4 – 3.8 times higher Φ Δ . We additionally explored potential FFA-mediated triplet excited state quenching processes using laser spectroscopy. While we observed that FFA effectively quenched and/or chemically reacted with triplets of small molecule sensitizers, we observed minimal quenching of the triplet excited state DOM/PyDOM by FFA. This suggests that for DOM/PyDOM, FFA-triplet reactions are not major side reactions in FFA-based 1 O 2 measurements at 365 nm. Results from this study illuminate the potential issues of FFA interacting with sensitizer triplet excited states and advance the understanding of 1 O 2 phosphorescence-based Φ Δ measurements.