Luminescence and photochemical studies of singlet oxygen photonics

This paper starts from the short historical account presenting seminal contributions of A.N. Terenin to studies of the dye triplet states and photonics of singlet oxygen. Then, three the most successful projects of author's group dealing with singlet oxygen photonics are discussed. The most attention was devoted to discovery of photosensitized phosphorescence of singlet oxygen in the solution-phase and to its kinetic features in organic solvents and aqueous solutions after short laser pulses. The second project dealt with photosensitized luminescence, which accompanies summation of energy of two singlet oxygen molecules, and was shown to be emitted by singlet oxygen dimols (1O2)2 or dye molecules, which accumulate energy from two 1O2 molecules. The third project dealt with photochemical investigation of the oxygen absorption bands corresponding to the triplet–singlet transitions in oxygen molecules dissolved in organic solvents and water saturated with air at normal atmospheric pressure. The results of these projects have been shown to work for theoretical and applied problems of spectroscopy, photochemistry, photobiology and photomedicine.