Complementary Lock‐and‐Key Ligand Binding of a Triplet Transmitter to a Nanocrystal Photosensitizer

Abstract

Owing to the difficulty in comprehensively characterizing nanocrystal (NC) surfaces, clear guidance for ligand design is lacking. In this work, a series of bidentate bis(pyridine) anthracene isomers (2,3‐PyAn, 3,3‐PyAn, 2,2‐PyAn) that differ in their binding geometries were designed to find the best complementary fit to the NC surface. The efficiency of triplet energy transfer (TET) from the CdSe NC donor to a diphenylanthracene (DPA) acceptor mediated by these isomers was used as a proxy for the efficacy of orbital overlap and therefore ligand binding. 2,3‐PyAn, with an intramolecular N–N distance of 8.2 Å, provided the best match to the surface of CdSe NCs. When serving as a transmitter for photon upconversion, 2,3‐PyAn yielded the highest upconversion quantum yield (QY) of 12.1±1.3 %, followed by 3,3‐PyAn and 2,2‐PyAn. The TET quantum efficiencies determined by ultrafast transient absorption measurements showed the same trend.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Apr 12, 2017
Source ID
10.1002/anie.201701929

Entities

People

  • Alexander Fast
  • Dmitry A. Fishman
  • Ming Lee Tang
  • Xin Li
  • Zhiyuan Huang

Organizations

  • National Science Foundation
  • United States Army
  • University of California, Riverside

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Chemistry

Readers

  • Chemistry (specifically Chemical Fluorescence)
  • Nanoscale Plasmonic Nanotechnology
  • Organic Chemistry

Technology Areas

  • Quantum Computing
  • Space