(Invited) Ultrafast Symmetry-Breaking Charge Separation in Organic Semiconductors

Wednesday, 12 October 2022: 09:00
Room 217 (The Hilton Atlanta)
M. R. Wasielewski, C. Lin, T. Kim, J. D. Schultz, and R. M. Young (Northwestern University)
Understanding the photophysics and photochemistry of molecular π-stacked chromophores is important for utilizing them as functional photonic materials. However, these investigations have been mostly limited to covalent molecular dimers, which can only approximate the electronic and vibronic interactions present in higher oligomers typical of functional organic materials. In this work, we show that a comparison of the excited-state dynamics of a covalent slip-stacked perylenediimide (PDI) dimer (1) and trimer (2) provides fundamental insights into electronic state mixing and symmetry-breaking charge separation (SB-CS) beyond the dimer limit. We find that coherent vibronic coupling to high-frequency modes facilitates ultrafast state mixing between the Frenkel exciton (FE) and charge transfer (CT) states. Subsequently, solvent fluctuations and interchromophore low-frequency vibrations promote CT character in the coherent FE/CT mixed state. The coherent FE/CT mixed state persists in 1, while in 2, low-frequency vibronic coupling collapses the coherence resulting in ultrafast SB-CS between the distal PDI units.