Keywords :

Self-organization, electron and energy transfer, photovoltaic, molecular electronics


The implementation of molecular recognition for the designed self-assembly of photo- and electro-active building blocks opens the way to smart organic, inorganic, and hybrid materials capable of autonomic communication, pervasive adaptability, and self-healing. In this field, our approach draws from our extensive experience in the supramolecular control of excited state processes, especially electron and energy transfer, to craft new assemblies endowed with properties that arm them to respond in predetermined fashion to external conditions and stimuli.
[1] For example, we have shown that extended polyaromatics such as tetracene can be modified and instilled with gellating ability, thereby forming novel fibrilar structures conducive to unidimensional electron and energy transfer processes.
[2] The self-assembled nature of these fibrilar networks allows them, in principle, to re-route information transfer between distant sites in ways reminiscent of neural networks. Additionally, self-assembly of electron donor and acceptor moieties allowed us to propose hydrogen-bonded self-assembled heterojunctions capable of light-to-electricity conversion as a new approach to designing all-organic photovoltaic devices exhibiting enhanced stability and performance.
[3,4] This has also been extended to the assembly of nano-particles
[5] and hybrid organic-inorganic macroporous materials. It is anticipated that controlled deposition and spontaneous organization of these and other architectures on and in-between electrodes will provide electronic components (eg. field-effect transistors) in which the molecular and supramolecular nature of the active organic material provides new properties, such as sensing and recognition, that are well-beyond those attainable with purely inorganic, silicium-based components.

Publications :

01 Controlling the Emission Polarization from Single Crystals Using Light : Towards Photopolic Materials
Raffy, Guillaume ; Ray, Debdas ; Chu, Cheng-Che ; Del Guerzo, Andre ; Bassani, Dario M.
Angewandte Chemie, International Edition (2011), 50(41), 9584-9588

02 Functional monolayers from carbon nanostructures - fullerenes, carbon nanotubes, and graphene - as novel materials for solar energy conversion
Dubacheva, Galina V. ; Liang, Chih-Kai ; Bassani, Dario M.
Coordination Chemistry Reviews (2012), 256(21-22), 2628-2639

_ 1 : Supramolecular Control of Oligothienylenevinylene-Fullerene Interactions : Evidence for a Ground-State EDA Complex.
N. D. McClenaghan, Z. Grote, K. Darriet, M. Zimine, R. M. Williams, L. De Cola, D. M. Bassani, Org. Lett., 2005, 7, 807.

2 : Synthesis of 2,3-Substituted Tetracenes and Evaluation of Their Self-Assembling Properties in Organic Solvents.
J. Reichwagen, H. Hopf, A. Del Guerzo, C. Belin, J.-P. Desvergne, H. Bouas-Laurent, Org. Lett., 2005, 7(6), 971.

3 : Enhanced Photovoltaic Response in Hydrogen-Bonded All-Organic Devices.
C.-H. Huang, N. D. McClenaghan, A. Kuhn, J. W. Hofstraat, D. M. Bassani, Org. Lett, 2005, 7, 3409.

4 : Hierarchical self-assembly of all-organic photovoltaic devices.
C.-H. Huang, N. D. McClenaghan, A. Kuhn, G. Bravic, D. M. Bassani, Tetrahedron (Special issue on fullerenes), 2006, 62, 2050 - 2059.

5 : H-Bonded CdS Nanoparticle Assemblies on Electrodes for Photoelectrochemical Applications.
R. Baron, C.-H. Huang, D. M. Bassani, A. Onopriyenko, M. Zayats, I. Willner, Angew. Chemie, Int. Ed. 2005, 44, 4010.