Experimentally Measured Rotational Reorientation Time of Coumarin 6 Laser Dye in Ethanol and Acetonitrile Solvents

The photophysical properties of coumarin 6 laser dye have been studied in two solvents; ethanol and acetonitrile using steady-state fluorescence depolarization technique. The experimentally measured reorientation time of coumarin 6 is more or less the same in given solvents at particular temperature. It is found that coumarin 6 rotates slower in acetonitrile than in ethanol especially at higher values of viscosity over temperature. We also measure the ground and excited state dipole moments of coumarin 6 by solvent perturbation method. The results found that excited state dipole moment is greater than ground state dipole moment, which indicates that excited state is more polar than the ground state.