(Invited) Decorating Nanocarbons with Perylenediimide Systems

Abstract

Carbon-based nanostructured materials (fullerenes, carbon nanotubes or graphene, to name a few) are known to show electron-acceptor properties at the molecular scale, together with high values of electron mobilities in bulk. Thus, its implementation in active materials is an important issue in order to develop organic efficient full optoelectronic devices. One of the strategies employed in the improvement of the interesting optoelectronic properties of carbon nanostructures, is the doping, either in a covalent or a non-covalent way, with specially designed electron-donor/light harvesting moieties. These moieties act like light collectors, exciting themselves and promoting an electron to a higher energy state, which is rapidly deactivated through electron and/or energy transfer processes to the carbon-based nanostructure.Here we present different strategies for the covalent and non-covalent functionalization of nanocarbon materials. In these examples, the decorating agents, specially designed perylenediimides[1-4] (Figure 1) and others, whose electronic character has been modulated through the introduction of different substituents, are successfully employed to improve the light absorption behaviour in the UV and NIR regions of the, in principle, unabsorbing carbon nanoforms, thus yielding hybrid materials with potential applicability like active layers in organic photovoltaic devices. Acknowledgements. This work has been supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Generalitat Valenciana and the European FEDER funds (grants CTQ2011-26455, CTQ2014-55798-R, PROMETEO 2012/010 and ISIC/2012/008) References Martín-Gomis, L.; Rotas, G.; Ohkubo, K.; Fernández-Lázaro, F.; Fukuzumi, S.; Tagmatarchis, N.; Sastre-Santos, Á. Nanoscale 2015, 7, 7437-7444..Barrejón, M.; Pla, S.; Berlanga, I.; Gómez-Escalonilla, M. J.; Martín-Gomis, L.; Fierro, J. L.; Zhang, M.; Yudasaka, M.; Iijima, S.; Gobeze, H. B.; D’Souza, F.; Sastre-Santos, Á.; Langa, F. J. Mater.Chem. C. 2015, 3, 10215-10224.Pla, S.; Niemi, M.; Martín-Gomis, L.; Fernández-Lázaro, F.; Lemmetyinen, H.; Tkachenko, N. V.; Sastre-Santos, Á. Phys.Chem. Chem. Phys. Accepted. Martín-Gomis, L.; Karousis, N.; Petsalakis, I. D.; Ohkubo, K.; Fernández-Lázaro, F.; Tagmatarchis, N.; Fukuzumi, S.; Sastre-Santos Á. Submitted. Figure 1. Chemical structures of a) [60]Fullerene-Perylenediimide (C60-PDI, DB-1,7-Pyr-PDI-C60) and b) Double Wall Carbon Nanotube-Perylenedimide (DWCNT-PDI). Figure 1