Self-Assembled Ruthenium(II)Porphyrin-Aluminium(III)Porphyrin-Fullerene Triad for Long-Lived Photoinduced Charge Separation

A very efficient metal-mediated strategy led, in a single step, to a quantitative construction of a new three-component multichromophoric system containing one fullerene monoadduct, one aluminium(III) monopyridylporphyrin, and one ruthenium(II) tetraphenylporphyrin. The Al(III) monopyridylporphyrin component plays the pivotal role in directing the correct self-assembly process and behaves as the antenna unit for the photoinduced processes of interest. A detailed study of the photophysical behavior of the triad was carried out in different solvents (CH2Cl2, THF, and toluene) by stationary and timeresolved emission and absorption spectroscopy in the pico- and nanosecond time domains. Following excitation of the Alporphyrin, the strong fluorescence typical of this unit was strongly quenched. The time-resolved absorption experiments provided evidence for the occurrence of stepwise photoinduced electron and hole transfer processes, leading to a chargeseparated state with reduced fullerene acceptor and oxidized ruthenium porphyrin donor. The time constant values measured in CH2Cl2 for the formation of charge-separated state Ru-Al+-C60 - (10 ps), the charge shift process (Ru-Al+-C60 - → Ru+-Al-C60 -), where a hole is transferred from Al-based to Ru-based unit (75 ps), and the charge recombination process to ground state (>5 ns), can be rationalized within the Marcus theory. Although the charge-separating performance of this triad is not outstanding, this study demonstrates that, using the self-assembling strategy, improvements can be obtained by appropriate chemical modifications of the individual molecular components.