Photoinduced multi-electron transfer in the Dn–A system consisting of multi-phthalocyanines linked to one carbon nanotube

Abstract

A D_n–A model in which a carbon nanotube (nanoscaled electron acceptor A) is attached with a number of electron donors (D_n), i.e.amino phthalocyanines, was employed to reveal the different nature of photoinduced electron transfer (PeT) in the nanoscaled model from that of a usual one-to-one linked D–A system, which is known to form the single-charge separation state D˙⁺–A˙⁻via well-studied single-electron transfer. For the D_n–A system, however, a one-step multi-electron transfer from multi donors to the same acceptor occurs simultaneously to generate a long-lived multiple-charge separation state D_n˙⁺–A˙ⁿ⁻ (n > 1), which is desirable for efficiently mimicking PSII in photosynthesis.