It takes three: The key functionalities of an optical transistor, gating and amplification, are demonstrated exploiting the photophysical properties of a molecular triad (see picture). Two building blocks of the triad are highly efficient fluorophores, whereas the third building block is a photochromic molecule that can be reversibly interconverted between two bistable forms by light.

No abstract

Aller guten Dinge sind drei: Die Hauptmerkmale eines optischen Transistors (Steuerung und Verstärkung) werden anhand der photophysikalischen Eigenschaften einer molekularen Triade gezeigt (siehe Bild). Zwei Bausteine der Triade sind hocheffiziente Fluorophore, wohingegen der dritte Baustein ein photochromes Molekül ist, das durch Licht reversibel von einer bistabilen Form in die andere umgewandelt werden kann.

A new technologically relevant method for multichromophore sensitizing of hybrid blend solar cells is presented. Two dyes having complementary absorption in the UV-visible regions are individually adsorbed on nanocrystalline TiO(2) powder. These dyed TiO(2) nanoparticles are blended with an organic hole-conductor (HC) Spiro-OMeTAD in desired compositions and applied on a conducting substrate by doctor-blading at room temperature to fabricate multichromophore-sensitized hybrid blend solar cells. The external quantum efficiency (EQE) of the single hybrid layer system fabricated with two dyes, that absorb mainly UV (TPD dye) and visible regions (Ru-TPA-NCS dye), exhibited a clear panchromatic response with the sum of the EQE characteristics of each single dye cell. The first results of a multichromophore-sensitized solid-state solar cell showed J(sc) of 2.1 mA cm(-2), V(oc) of 645 mV, FF of 47% and efficiency of 0.65% at AM 1.5 G, 100 mW cm(-2) illumination intensity. The J(sc) of the multichromophore cell is the sum of the individually dyed solar cells. The process described here is technically very innovative and very simple in procedure. It has potentials to be adopted for panchromatic sensitization using more than two dyes in a single hybrid layer or layer-wise fabrication of a tandem structure at room temperature.