Picosecond photodissociation study of the excimer formation in van der Waals dimers of aromatic molecules

The excimer formation that takes place following electronic excitation of van der Waals dimers of fluorene and dibenzofuran has been investigated in real-time using a picosecond pump-probe photodissociation technique. For both dimers, excimer formation is found to occur on a ≈40 ps time scale. The result indicates that the broadening in the excitation spectrum of the dibenzofuran dimer is due to inhomogeneous sources.