Recent Advances in Photoinduced Electron Transfer Processes of Fullerene-Based Molecular Assemblies and Nanocomposites

Abstract

Photosensitized electron-transfer processes of fullerenes hybridized with electron donating or other electron accepting molecules have been surveyed in this review on the basis of the recent results reported mainly from our laboratories. Fullerenes act as photo-sensitizing electron acceptors with respect to a wide variety of electron donors; in addition, fullerenes in the ground state also act as good electron acceptors in the presence of light-absorbing electron donors such as porphyrins. With single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs), the photoexcited fullerenes act as electron acceptor. In the case of triple fullerene/porphyrin/SWCNT architectures, the photoexcited porphyrins act as electron donors toward the fullerene and SWCNT. These mechanisms are rationalized with the molecular orbital considerations performed for these huge supramolecules. For the confirmation of the electron transfer processes, transient absorption methods have been used, in addition to time-resolved fluorescence spectral measurements. The kinetic data obtained in solution are found to be quite useful to predict the efficiencies of photovoltaic cells.

New photophysical insights on effect of gold nanoparticles on the interaction between phthalocyanine and PC70BM in solution

“…Accordingly, both covalently and non-covalently linked fullerene-Pc dyads and triads have been designed for better understanding the mechanistic details of the photoinduced electron transfer process relevant to the construction of artificial photosynthetic reaction centre [3][4][5][6][7][8][9]. In a fullerene/Pc dyad, the role of the Pc is dual: first it is to function as an antenna and secondly, to act as a donor molecule during photo-excitation.…”

Nanoscale Fluorescence Emitters

“…One was awarded for fullerenes , the structures in the form of hollow spheres. Later fullerenes found their use as scaffolds in designing fl uorescence nanocomposites (Palma et al 2009 ;Dmitruk et al 2008 ) and electron-acceptor quenchers (Ito and D'Souza 2012 ). The other award was for graphenes , the two-dimensional sheets of atomic width ) that became known as very potent fl uorescence quenchers (Lu et al 2009 ).…”

Solid State Physicochemical Properties and Applications of Organic and Metallo- Organic Fullerene Derivatives

“…Combination with electron donors results in high quantum yields of exciton separation thanks to the deep-lying LUMO level of the fullerene species, which favors efficient photoinduced electron transfer from the donor [184,185]. For example, porphyrin-fullerene linked dyads have been extensively studied, based on the fact that porphyrins play an essential role for charge separation in natural photosynthesis [186,187,188,189,190].…”