Bending a photonic wire into a ring

Gotfredsen, Henrik; Deng, Jie Ren; Van Raden, Jeff M.; Righetto, Marcello; Hergenhahn, Janko; Clarke, Michael; Bellamy-Carter, Abigail; Hart, Jack; O’Shea, James; Claridge, Timothy D.W.; Duarte, Fernanda; Saywell, Alex; Herz, Laura M.; Anderson, Harry L.

Abstract

Natural light-harvesting systems absorb sunlight and transfer its energy to the reaction centre, where it is used for photosynthesis. Synthetic chromophore arrays provide useful models for understanding energy migration in these systems. Research has focused on mimicking rings of chlorophyll molecules found in purple bacteria, known as ‘light-harvesting system 2’. Linear meso–meso linked porphyrin chains mediate rapid energy migration, but until now it has not been possible to bend them into rings. Here we show that oligo-pyridyl templates can be used to bend these rod-like photonic wires to create covalent nanorings that consist of 24 porphyrin units and a single butadiyne link. Their elliptical conformations have been probed by scanning tunnelling microscopy. This system exhibits two excited state energy transfer processes: one from a bound template to the peripheral porphyrins and one, in the template-free ring, from the exciton-coupled porphyrin array to the π-conjugated butadiyne-linked porphyrin dimer segment. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]

Citation

Gotfredsen, H., Deng, J. R., Van Raden, J. M., Righetto, M., Hergenhahn, J., Clarke, M., …Anderson, H. L. (2022). Bending a photonic wire into a ring. Nature Chemistry, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-022-01032-w

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jul 27, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Oct 17, 2022
• Publication Date: Oct 17, 2022
• Deposit Date: Oct 24, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 18, 2023
• Journal: Nature Chemistry
• Print ISSN: 1755-4330
• Electronic ISSN: 1755-4349
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-022-01032-w
• Keywords: General Chemical Engineering; General Chemistry
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/12624225
• Publisher URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-022-01032-w