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44138-AC3
Design, Synthesis, and Photophysics of Platinum(II) Sensitizers for Solar Energy Conversion

Felix N. Castellano, Bowling Green State University

During the first year of support a great deal of effort was expended on the photophysical and electrochemical characterization of a platinum(II) diimine complex bearing the bidentate diacetylide ligand tolan-2,2'-diacetylide (tda), Pt(dbbpy)(tda) [dbbpy = 4,4'-di-tert-butyl-2,2'-bipyridine] (1), whose properties were compared with two reference compounds, Pt(dbbpy)(CßCPh)2 (2) and Pt(dppp)tda [dppp = 1,3-bis(diphenylphosphino)propane] (3), respectively. The X-ray crystal structure of 1 illustrates the nearly perfect square planarity exhibited by this metallacycle. Chromophore 2 possesses low lying charge transfer excited states analogous to 1 whereas structure 3 lacks such excited states but features a low lying Pt-perturbed tda intraligand triplet manifold. In CH2Cl2, 1 exhibits a broad emission centered at 562 nm at ambient temperature, similar to 2, but with a higher photoluminescence quantum yield and longer excited-state lifetime. In both instances the photoluminescence is consistent with triplet charge transfer excited state parentage. The rigidity imposed by the cyclic diacetylide ligand in 1 leads to a reduction in nonradiative decay which enhances its room temperature photophysical properties. By comparison, 3 radiates highly structured tda-localized triplet state phosphorescence at room temperature. The 77 K emission spectrum of 1 in 4:1 EtOH/MeOH becomes structured and is quantitatively similar to that measured for 3 under the same conditions. Since the 77 K spectra are nearly identical, the emissions are assigned as triplet-tda in nature, implying that the charge transfer states are raised in energy relative to the triplet-tda levels in 1 in the low temperature glass. Nanosecond transient absorption spectrometry and ultrafast difference spectra were determined for 1-3 in CH2Cl2 and DMF at ambient temperature. In 1 and 2, the major absorption transients are consistent with the one-electron reduced complexes, corroborated by reductive spectroelectrochemical measurements performed at room temperature. As 3 does not possess any charge transfer character, excitation into the pi-pi* transitions of the tda ligand generated transient absorptions in the relaxed excited state assigned to the ligand-localized triplet state. In all three cases, the excited state lifetimes measured by transient absorption are similar to those measured by time-resolved photoluminescence, suggesting that the same excited states giving rise to the photoluminescence are responsible for the absorption transients. ESR spectroscopy of the anions 1- and 2- and reductive spectroelectrochemistry of 1 and 2 revealed a LUMO based largely on the pi* orbital of the dbbpy ligand. Time-dependent density functional theory calculations performed on 1-3 in both vacuum and CH2Cl2 continuum revealed the molecular orbitals, energies, dipole moments, and oscillator strengths for the various electronic transitions in these molecules. A DSCF method derived shift applied to the calculated transition energies in the solvent continuum yielded good agreement between theory and experiment for each molecule in this study. The initial report of this work was featured as the cover story of the May 29th, 2006 issue of Inorganic Chemistry. This funding has also seeded our recent efforts in solar hydrogen production from water using molecular catalysts in concert with metal oxide nanomaterials.

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