Shedding light on luminescence lifetime measurement and associated data treatment

Abstract

Luminescence lifetime is a crucial parameter in photophysical studies that bears essential physical and chemical information and that is used to quantify a variety of phenomena, from the determination of quenching mechanisms to temperature sensing and bioimaging. The current perception of lifetime measurement is that it is a trivial and fast experiment. However, despite this apparent simplicity, measuring luminescence decay and fitting the obtained data to a suitable model can be far more intricate. In this perspective, the influence of experimental parameters and fitting procedures on the determination of lifetimes are investigated and, through carefully chosen examples, it is shown that large variations, up to 10%, can be induced by varying parameters such as the data acquisition time, the baseline evaluation, or the mathematical fitting model. In order to present to a wider audience, detailed mathematical descriptions are kept out of the manuscript.