Porphyrin-and fullerene-based molecular photovoltaic devices

We have developed a novel strategy for the construction of molecular photovoltaic devices where the porphyrins and fullerenes employed as building blocks are organized info nanostructured artificial photosynthetic systems by self-assembly processes. Highly efficient photosynthetic energy-and etectron-transfer processes take place at gold and indium tin oxide (ITO) electrodes modified with self-assembled monolayers of porphyrin-or fullerene linked systems. Porphyrins and fullerenes have also been assembled step by step to make large and uniform clusters on nanostructured semiconductor electrodes, which exhibit high power-conversion efficiency of close to 1 %. These results will provide valuable information on the desist of donor-acceptor-type molecular assemblies that can be tailored to construct highly efficient photovoltaic devices.