posted on 2010-07-22, 00:00authored byChristiane C. Hofmann, Stefan M. Lindner, Michaela Ruppert, Andreas Hirsch, Saif A. Haque, Mukundan Thelakkat, Jürgen Köhler
A flexible organic dyad consisting of a perylene bisimide antenna covalently linked to a [60]fullerene has been synthesized and studied by electrochemistry, steady-state spectroscopy, and time-resolved spectroscopy. We found that the energy absorbed by the perylene bisimide is transferred to the fullerene with an efficiency close to 100%. The fullerene in turn undergoes intersystem crossing followed by triplet energy transfer back to the perylene bisimide with an efficiency of at least 20%. Hence the perylene bisimide unit acts as an antenna for the fullerene, i.e., effectively extending the fullerene absorption far into the visible spectral range, while at the same time the fullerene acts as a triplet sensitizer for the perylene bisimide. This has severe consequences for the exploitation of the dye antenna−fullerene concept for light harvesting in solar cells.