Separation of scattering and absorption contributions in UV/visible spectra of resonant systems

Resonance light scattering (RLS) is a phenomenon due to an enhancement of the scattered light in close proximity to an absorption band. The effect is easily detectable in the case of strongly absorbing chromophores, which are able to interact, thus leading to large aggregates (Pasternack, R. F.; Collings, P. J. Science 1995, 269, 935). The measurement of absorption spectra from solutions containing such resonant systems can lead to misleading results. In this paper, a simple method is described to obtain absorption spectra of aggregated species with a fairly good correction of the scattering component. The RIS spectrum, obtained using a common spectrofluorimeter, is correlated to the extinction spectrum of the same sample, allowing for an estimation of the scattering contribution to the total extinction spectrum. The method has been successfully applied both on real samples containing aggregated chromophores, such as porphyrins, chlorophyll a and gold colloids, and by simulating extinction spectra.