Photoinduced processes such as photoinduced electron transfer (PET) or energy transfer (EnT) play an essential role in the conversion of solar energy into chemical or electrical energy. Obtaining artificial systems with high charge transfer efficiency and a long-lived charge-separated state is important for improving the efficiency of solar energy conversion. The aim is to design and finely characterize (PET and EnT) efficient and sustainable photoactive systems, with a view to meeting current and future energy needs (collab. Institut Lavoisier de Versailles, Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes, Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux d’Orsay, Institut de biologie Intégrative de la Cellule de l’Université Paris-Saclay and Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan).
To carry out these studies, we employ a range of time-resolved spectroscopic techniques: transient absorption spectroscopies with femtosecond to millisecond resolution, and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. In addition, a new pump-pump-probe transient absorption setup with two synchronized excitation beams has been developed for characterizing charge photoaccumulation in photocatalysts (Mendes Marinho, Angew. Chem. 2017).
More recently, a novel pump-pump-probe resonant Raman spectroscopy setup has been developed to study charge photoaccumulation using a Raman probe instead of UV-visible absorption (Cruz Neto, JPCL 2023). Using the developed experimental park and via different collaborations, we have studied the photophysics of different molecular systems for solar photosynthesis: new organic, inorganic or hybrid multichromophoric systems (see below).
Examples of molecular systems studied for solar energy conversion.