McHale Jeanne L
Department of Chemistry, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington 99164-4630, United States.
J Phys Chem Lett. 2012 Mar 1;3(5):587-97. doi: 10.1021/jz3000678. Epub 2012 Feb 14.
The tunable optical properties of self-assembled chromophores are exploited by photosynthetic organisms to optimize their ability to harvest a broad range of the solar spectrum. Similarly, the efficiency of solar photovoltaic and photoelectrochemical devices depends strongly on the coincidence of the absorption spectrum of the photoactive components with the spectrum of the sun. While the possibility of borrowing ideas about light-harvesting aggregates from nature in order to improve the efficiency of solar energy conversion is quite attractive, progress to date is hindered by incomplete understanding of aggregate internal structure and its relation to excitonic states. In this Perspective, we describe our recent work on the hierarchal structure of self-assembled porphyrin aggregates that are similar to light-harvesting complexes of photosynthetic bacteria. We address the question of whether aggregation can be beneficial to dye-sensitized solar energy conversion and present promising results for a solar cell based on an abundant plant pigment that displays signatures of aggregation when adsorbed on TiO2.
光合生物利用自组装发色团的可调光学特性来优化其捕获宽范围太阳光谱的能力。同样，太阳能光伏和光电化学装置的效率在很大程度上取决于光活性组件的吸收光谱与太阳光谱的吻合程度。虽然借鉴自然界中光捕获聚集体的思路来提高太阳能转换效率很有吸引力，但迄今为止，由于对聚集体内部结构及其与激子态的关系了解不全面，进展受到阻碍。在这篇观点文章中，我们描述了我们最近关于自组装卟啉聚集体层次结构的研究工作，这些聚集体类似于光合细菌的光捕获复合物。我们探讨了聚集是否有利于染料敏化太阳能转换的问题，并展示了基于一种丰富的植物色素的太阳能电池的有前景的结果，该色素吸附在TiO₂上时显示出聚集特征。
