Published in

American Chemical Society, Journal of the American Chemical Society, 36(137), p. 11637-11644, 2015

DOI: 10.1021/jacs.5b04075

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Dynamics of Energy Transfer in a Conjugated Dendrimer Driven by Ultrafast Localization of Excitations

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Red circle
Preprint: archiving forbidden
Orange circle
Postprint: archiving restricted
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

Solar energy-conversion starts with the harvest of light, and its efficacy depends on the spatial transfer of the light-energy to where it can be transduced into other forms of energy. Harnessing solar power as a clean energy source requires the continuous development of new synthetic materials that can harvest photon-energy and transport it without significant losses. With chemically controlled branched architectures, dendrimers are ideally suited for these initial steps, since they consist of arrays of chromophores with relative positioning and orientations to create energy gradients and to spatially focus excitation energies. The spatial localization of the energy delimits its efficacy and has been a point of intense research for synthetic light-harvesters. We present the results of a combined theoretical-experimental study elucidating ultrafast, unidirectional, electronic energy-transfer on a complex molecule designed to spatially focus the initial excitation onto an energy-sink. The study explores the complex interplay between atomic motions, excited-state populations, and localization/delocalization of excitations. Our findings show that the electronic energy transfer mechanism involves the ultrafast collapse of the photoexcited wavefunction due to non-adiabatic electronic transitions. The localization of the wavefunction is driven by the efficient coupling to high-frequency vibrational modes leading to ultrafast excited state dynamics and unidirectional efficient energy funneling. This work provides a long-awaited consistent experiment-theoretical description of excited-state dynamics in organic conjugated-dendrimers with atomistic resolution, a phenomenon expected to universally appear in a variety of synthetic conjugated-materials.