Donor-acceptor assemblies formed between BODIPY or ferrocene-BODIPY hybrids and nanocarbon materials for light harvesting
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Date
2021
Authors
Blesener, Tanner
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Abstract
The energy crisis is a major problem the world is currently facing with many scientists working on ways to solve it. The development of new renewable energy resources has been studied extensively in recent years with intense interest in the development of new solar cell devices. This research has led to the development of new third generation photovoltaic devices such as dye-sensitized, organic, perovskite, and quantum dot solar cells. The research explored here focused on the development of new boron azadipyrromethane (aza-BODIPY) and boron dipyrromethane (BODIPY) dyes for use in organic and dye sensitized solar cells. The reason for using aza-BODIPY and BODIPY dyes is due to their high absorptivity and fluorescence quantum yields. We designed and synthesized four different types of aza-BODIPY and BODIPY compounds starting with β-pyrrolic dipyrene aza-BODIPYs, followed by α-pyrrolic pyrene BODIPYs, third was a ferrocene-BODIPY-C60 fullerene triad, and the final design was a dipyridine BODIPY. These compounds were studied using UV-vis and steady-state fluorescence spectroscopy as well as X-ray crystallography. In order to investigate the interaction between donors and acceptors both absorption and fluorescence titration experiments along with transient absorption spectroscopy was also conducted. The goal was to determine what type of architecture works best for the formation of supramolecular arrays between donors and acceptors: non-covalent, covalent, or coordination. The results of the experiments with dipyrene aza-BODIPY and BODIPY compounds showed that non-covalent interaction occurred between our dyes and nanocarbon material in the solid state with stronger interactions occurring with graphene and single walled carbon nanotubes. The ferrocene-BODIPY-C60 triad complexes revealed that rapid excited state deactivation caused by catechol bridging group can be subverted via rapid charge transfer from ferrocene to the BODIPY thus extending its excited state lifetime. Dipyridine BODIPY acceptors were able to successfully mimic pyridine C60 acceptors and form charge separated states with zinc tetra-tertbutyl phthalocyanine via coordination of pyridine linking group to the metal center. Since photoinduced electron transfer was only seen in our coordination complexes, this has become our preferred architecture for the preparation of light harvesting devices.
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Keywords
Chemistry, BODIPY, OPV, Solar cell, Renewable energy
Citation
ACS