Customized Electronic Coupling in Self-Assembled Donor-Acceptor Nanostructures

Advanced Functional Materials 19, 3573 - 3567 (2009)

Customized Electronic Coupling in Self-Assembled Donor-Acceptor Nanostructures

D.G. de Oteyza, J.M. García-Lastra, M. Corso, B.P. Doyle, L. Floreano, A. Morgante, Y. Wakayama, A. Rubio, J. E. Ortega

Charge transfer processes between donor-acceptor complexes and metallic electrodes are at the heart of novel organic optoelectronic devices such as solar cells. Here we use a combined approach of surface sensitive microscopies, synchrotron radiation spectroscopies and state-of-the art ab-initio calculations to demonstrate the delicate balance that exists between intermolecular and molecule-substrate interactions, hybridization, and charge transfer in model donor-acceptor assemblies at metal-organic interfaces. We show that charge transfer and chemical properties of interfaces based on single component layers cannot be extrapolated to binary donor-acceptor assemblies. In particular, studying the self-assembly of supramolecular nanostructures on Cu(111), composed of fluorinated copper-phthalocyanines (F16CuPc) and diindenoperylene (DIP), we find that the donor (DIP) decouples electronically from the substrate in mixed layers with enhanced intermolecular interactions, while the acceptor (F16CuPc) suffers strong hybridization with the metal substrate.

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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adfm.200901374

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