Light-Harvesting Antenna System for Molecular Electronics

Molecular electronics has been growing rapidly to a point where the ambition is to miniaturize conventional electronic devices down to the single-molecule scale. We construct a molecular scale electronic device based on a donor-acceptor antenna (DAA) system composed of an electron donating quantum dots (QDs) and electron accepting C₆₀ coupled via an aminoalkanethiol bridge. The DAA system was fabricated by a self-assembly procedure, and the charge transfer (CT) rate and charge discharge (CD) efficiency are demonstrated. The CT rate that we obtained for our DAA system is 776 × 10⁶ s^-1, which is ten times greater than the reported value. Photoluminescence excitation data, PL lifetime, and intensity trajectory data show that strong CT occurs from the QD to the C₆₀ PTA, and this thin DAA film (<;100 nm) device can hold photogenerated charges for almost 3 h before complete dissipation when not connected to an external circuit, which can have a positive impact on the application of these DAA-based device in molecular electronics. We anticipate that our findings will catalyze the development of new lightweight solar battery.