Photo-induced resonance energy transfer and nonlinear optical response in ball-type phthalocyanine conjugated to semiconductor and graphene quantum dots

Abstract

The synthesis of ball-type zinc and gallium phthalocyanines (complexes 2 and 3) and their covalent linkage to glutathione (GSH) and amine functionalized quantum dots (QDs) are reported in this work. Furthermore, their photophysical, photo-induced resonance energy transfer and optical limiting responses were investigated. We observed a decrease in the fluorescence quantum yields with a corresponding increase in the triplet quantum yields of the nanoconjugates in comparison to the phthalocyanine complexes alone. The reverse saturable absorption was found to be dependent on the excited state absorption, and the observed limiting threshold ranged from 0.32 to 1.43 J cm⁻². Enhanced triplet parameters and nonlinear optical performance were found when the complexes were covalently linked to semiconductor quantum dots compared to carbon based graphene quantum dots.