Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 May 2017
Local environment of fluorescent dyes could strongly affects emission dynamics of the latter. In particular, both signal intensities and emission lifetimes are highly sensitive to solvent temperatures. Here, temperature-dependent behavior Rhodamine B fluorescence in water and ethanol solutions was experimentally investigated. Phase transition point between liquid water and ice was shown to have a dramatic impact on both in intensity (30-fold drop) and in lifetime (from 2.68 ns down to 0.13 ns) of the dye luminescence along with the shift of spectral maxima from 590 to 625 nm. At the same time, use of ethanol as solvent does not lead to any similar behavior. The reported results and approaches enable further investigations of dye-solvent interactions and studies of physical properties at phase transition points.