Donor-Acceptor Heterojunction Configurations Based on DNA-Multichromophore Arrays.

Abstract

Multichromophore arrays of bis(2-thienyl)diketopyrrolopyrrole (DPP) and naphthalenediimide (NDI) with two Zn(II) -cyclens were constructed using thymidine DNA as a scaffold through the binding of the Zn(II) -cyclens with thymine bases. We demonstrate photocurrent generation in a donor-acceptor heterojunction configuration consisting of the DPP (donor) and NDI (acceptor) arrays co-immobilized on an Au electrode. The co-immobilized electrode exhibited good photocurrent responses because of the efficient charge separation between the DPP and NDI arrays. In contrast, an immobilized electrode consisting of randomly assembled DPP-NDI arrays generated no photocurrent response because DPP formed ground-state charge-transfer complexes with NDI in the randomly assembled arrays. Therefore, our approach to generate donor-acceptor heterojunctions based on DNA-multichromophore arrays is a useful method to efficiently generate photocurrent.