Photon upconversion is a photochemical means to generate high-energy emission from low-energy excitation, which has potential applications in solar energy and solar fuel devices.  This presentation will describe efforts to develop less costly copper(I) diimine based sensitizers to replace the commonly used ruthenium, platinum, and palladium dyes.  In the excited state, copper(I) diimine complexes undergo a significant structural rearrangement.  This rearrangement leads to these complexes having large pseudo-Stokes shifts and very short lifetimes, which limits their usefulness as sensitizers.  Adding substituents to the 2,9 positions of the phenanthroline ligand is a way to modulate the degree of structural distortion in the copper(I) MLCT excited state.  A series of copper(I) bis-phenanthroline complexes, substituted in the 2,9-positions with aliphatic groups of varying steric bulk and length, have been synthesized  The effect of these substituents on the photophysical properties of the complexes and their performance as sensitizers for photon upconversion will be discussed.

Cuprous phenanthroline sensitized photochemical upconversion

245th National Meeting (2013)

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