Determination of Fluorescence Lifetime of Natural Oganic Matter
EMSL Project ID
19990
Abstract
Our current work is utilizing excitation-emission matrix fluorescence spectroscopy combined with the multi-way Parallel Factor Analysis (PARAFAC) to decompose the fluorescence landscape of natural organic matter isolated from soils and plant residues into chemically meaningful components. The characterization of natural organic matter is of interest because of its involvement in many significant ecosystem processes such has nutrient bioavailabilty, metal solubilization and transport, and carbon sequestration. To obtain a better understanding of how organic matter affects these functions requires improved characterization of the organic matter itself and its interactions with both solution phase constituents, as well as mineral surfaces.We have demonstrated that 3-way PARAFAC is an important tool in interpreting the EEM spectra of natural organic matter. Our goal is to add the fluorophore lifetime dimension to increase the data array to a 4-design to improve the resolution and spectroscopic power of fluorescence to characterize the natural organic matter on interest and its interaction with environmentally significant metals such as copper, aluminum and iron.
We do not have a fluorescence lifetime instrumentation on our campus and the EMSL facility provides us with the opportunity to extend our research to another important dimension (fluorophore lifetime). Fluorescence lifetime is very sensitive to the chemical environment of the fluorophore and we feel that this additional parameterization of our organic matter of interest will significantly increase our ability to characterize the organic matter of interest.
Project Details
Project type
Exploratory Research
Start Date
2006-09-01
End Date
2007-08-31
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Related Publications
Ohno, T., Z. Wang, and R. Bro. 2008. PowerSlicing to determine fluorescence lifetimes of water-soluble organic matter derived from soils, plant biomass, and animal manures. Anal. Bioanal. Chem. 390(8):2189-2194.