An inclusive comparison regarding aggregation of surface active ionic liquid and conventional surfactant with a cationic dye Acridine Red exposed in view of spectroscopic and theoretical study.

[Display omitted] • Change in the polarity of the medium leads to solubilization in micellar systems. • The aggregation patterns of surface active ionic liquid (SAIL) and surfactant (SDS) differ. • Imidazolium cation of BMImOS reduces repulsion between polar head groups, facilitating SAIL micellization. • Imidazolium cation of BMImOS and BMImBr serves as a quencher, leading to a reduction in emission intensity. • BMImBr with the least surface activity prefers to exist as an AR-BMImBr salt-like ion pair. The investigation was conducted on the interaction of acridine red (AR) with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium octyl sulfate (BMImOS) in both premicellar and post micellar concentrations. The interaction between AR and room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium bromide (BMImBr) was studied to understand the effect of imidazolium cation on micellization. Spectroscopic experiments, such as UV–visible absorption spectroscopy, steady-state fluorescence spectroscopy, time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy, and dynamic light scattering, have been introduced. Various important parameters like spectral shifts, anisotropy, and aggregation number have been determined spectroscopically. However, a fresh insight into density functional theory calculations has also been provided. The observed results have been explained in terms of the aggregation behavior of the amphiphiles. A prominent redshift accompanied by a change in intensity is observed in the presence of surfactant and SAIL. However, in the case of BMImBr, no such spectral shift has been observed; only a decrease in spectral intensity highlights the quenching ability of the imidazolium cation. Average lifetime also provides some additional information regarding the difference in the formation of aggregates by SDS and BMImOS, which is further established from particle size density obtained from DLS. The salt like role of 1-butyl-3-methyl imidazolium cation also has been logically explained by anisotropy measurement and the determination of aggregation number. Using Gauss View 5.0 and Gaussian 09 package, the energy of optimization of each set of amphiphiles along with dye has been determined to follow the interaction at the molecular level. TDDFT calculations have also been performed to determine the structure of HOMO and LUMO. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]