Femtosecond depolarization dynamics of tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum films

For vapor-deposited tris(8-hydroxyquinoline) aluminum thin films, steady-state and subpicosecond transient optical anisotropy are investigated. It is found that the transient absorption anisotropy decays within tens of picoseconds. With a simple model calculation, the excited state population and anisotropy decay dynamics are disentangled, and the latter signal, the depolarization of the excited state, is explained by the energy transfer between the non-orthogonally-coordinated quinolate ligands. It is also shown that there are two pathways for this fast interligand energy transfer.