title: Determination of the orientation distribution of adsorbed fluorophores using TIRF. I. Theory.
abstract: The spectroscopic technique total internal reflection fluorescence can be used for determination of the orientation of adsorbed fluorescent molecules. The underlying theory is presented in general terms and elaborated in detail for the case that the fluorescent group is a porphyrin ring. It is shown that order parameters of the orientation distribution can be obtained if both the fluorescence intensity and its polarization are measured as functions of the polarization of the incident laser beam. From these order parameters an approximation of the orientation distribution can be derived by the maximum-entropy method.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physical and Colloid Chemistry, Agricultural University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
authors.forename: M A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Bos
authors.forename: J M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Kleijn
mesh_terms: D000327:Adsorption; D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D008433:Mathematics; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D008968:Molecular Conformation; D015394:Molecular Structure; D011166:Porphyrins / Q000737:chemistry*; D013050:Spectrometry, Fluorescence / Q000379:methods
chemical_list: D005456:Fluorescent Dyes; D011166:Porphyrins