Yes - you simply plot the fluorescence intensity as a function of quencher concentration. The slope of this line provides the Stern-Volmer quenching constant. However, without lifetime measurements you cannot distinguish between dynamic or static quenching. If you can measure polarization you could in principle observe if the polarization increases as quenching proceeds which would indicate a change in lifetime and hence a dynamic quenching component. Also if there is a significant static quenching component the Stern-Volmer plot will show an upward curvature as opposed to a straight line.

Check out the plots in the attachment.

David M Jameson

can we justify the decrease in upconversion luminescence with increasing time of irradiation with the help of Stern-Volmer plots without finding the luminescence lifetime (decay curves)?

Good question and I don't really know. But I asked a friend - Jay Knutson - who is an expert on upconversion and he replied:

"Very interesting!  I bet they're talking about nanoparticle upconversion, not the fs gating stuff i did w jianhua xu et al... probably they're thinking the delayed fluor of upcon particles is self quenched by an accumulation of e or holes they're creating with illumination time, so sort of like quenching we know as sv

.

But the limited dimensions of nanoparticles probably make diffusion assumptions of sv fail and we probably have weird poisson probability of creation of a quenching moiety in particle.

.

Just first thought..."

I hope this helps.

David M Jameson Thanks sir for your time, effort, and valuable answer.