Energy‐transfer in porphyrin‐ functionalized graphene (Phys. Status Solidi B 12/2014)

Abstract

Functionalization of carbon nanostructures presents a rapidly growing research field aiming at the design of tailored hybrid nanostructures characterized by remarkable properties of the carbon substrate combined with the strong light absorption of adsorbed molecules. First experimental studies have demonstrated an extremely efficient energy transfer from the non-covalently adsorbed molecules to the carbon substrate suggesting a promising application potential for high-efficiency photovoltaic devices, biomedical imaging, and sensing. Based on first-principle calculations, Malic et al. (pp. 2495–2498) have investigated the energy transfer within the porphyrin-functionalized graphene. The authors reveal that the underlying transfer mechanism is determined by the Förster coupling inducing a direct non-radiative transfer of energy from the optically excited molecule to the graphene substrate. The competing Dexter transfer is weak due to the small overlap of the involved strongly localized orbital functions. The gained insights are applicable to a variety of carbon-based hybrid nanostructures.