Fluorescence of Supermolecules, Polymers, and Nanosystems

The field of fluorescence continues to grow steadily, both in its fundamental aspects and applications. It is a highly interdisciplinary area that includes analytical, physical and organic chemistry, molecular sciences, biology, biomedicine, and medical research. This fourth volume in the Springer Series on Fluorescence focuses on the fluorescence of nanosystems, polymers, and supermolecules and the development and application of fluorescent probes. Special emphasis is placed on the fluorescence of artificial and biological nanosystems, single molecule fluorescence, and the luminescence of polymers, micro and nanoparticles, and nanotubes. The book also covers fluorescence microscopy and fluorescence correlation spectroscopy. It is recommended for practitioners and researchers in organic, analytical and physical chemistry, materials science, molecular biology, biophysics, and biology.

History and Fundamental Aspects.- Early History of Solution Fluorescence: The Lignum nephriticum of Nicolás Monardes.- From Well-Known to Underrated Applications of Fluorescence.- Principles of Directed Electronic Energy Transfer.- Luminescence Decays with Underlying Distributions of Rate Constants: General Properties and Selected Cases.- Fluorescence as the Choice Method for Single-Molecule Detection.- Molecular and Supramolecular Systems.- Water-soluble Fluorescent Chemosensors: in Tune with Protons.- Fluorescence of Fullerenes.- Squeezing Fluorescent Dyes into Nanoscale Containers-The Supramolecular Approach to Radiative Decay Engineering.- Polymers, Semiconductors, Model Membranes and Cells.- Resonance Energy Transfer in Polymer Interfaces.- Defocused Imaging in Wide-field Fluorescence Microscopy.- Dynamics of Excited States and Charge Photogeneration in Organic Semiconductor Materials.- Resonance Energy Transfer in Biophysics: Formalisms and Application to Membrane Model Systems.- Measuring Diffusion in a Living Cell Using Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy. A Closer Look at Anomalous Diffusion Using HIV-1 Integrase and its Interactions as a Probe.- Pushing the Complexity of Model Bilayers: Novel Prospects for Membrane Biophysics.- Nanotubes, Microparticles and Nanoparticles.- Photoluminescence Properties of Carbon Nanotubes.- Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopic Studies of a Single Lipopolyamine-DNA Nanoparticle.- Morphology-Dependent Resonance Emission from Individual Micron-Sized Particles.- New Plastic Microparticles and Nanoparticles for Fluorescent Sensing and Encoding.

From the reviews:

"Practitioners and researchers in organic and physical chemistry and in material sciences, analytical chemists, molecular biologists, biophysicists, biologists, will all welcome the appearance of this volume of the publishers' series. ... The volume will be a proud possession for any one of this group. It is a gold mine of information. It is a must-have, must-read and must-reread for everyone involved in methods and applications of fluorescence: spectroscopy, imaging and probes. And is sure to ... guide the researchers in remarkably significant manner." (Current Engineering Practice, 2008)