Electronic energy transfer in a subphthalocyanine – Zn porphyrin dimer studied by linear and nonlinear ultrafast spectroscopy

The efficient harvesting and transport of visible light by electronic energy transfer (EET) is critical to solar energy conversion in both nature and molecular electronics. In this work we study EET in a synthetic dyad comprising a visible absorbing subphthalocyanine (SubPc) donor and Zn Tetraphenyl Porphyrin (ZnTPP) acceptor. Energy transfer is probed by steady state spectroscopy, ultrafast transient absorption and two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy. Steady state and time resolved experiments point to only weak electronic coupling between the components of the dimer. The weak coupling supports energy transfer from the SubPc to the zinc porphyrin in 7 ps, which itself subsequently undergoes intersystem crossing to populate the triplet state. The rate of the forward energy transfer is discussed in terms of the structure of the dimer, which is calculated by density functional theory. There is evidence of back energy transfer from the ZnTPP on the hundreds of picoseconds time scale. Sub picosecond spectral diffusion was also observed and characterised, but does not influence the picosecond energy transfer.