Light energy conversion with chlorophyll a and pheophytin a monolayers at the optically transparent SnO2 electrode: artificial photosynthesis

Electrochemical characterization of species involved in photosynthesis: from proteins to model systems

“…As electron transfer processes occurring in photosynthesis have been widely studied as a model for efficient sunlight conversion into electricity, natural pigments can offer an appealing alternative as light absorbers by mimicking the photosynthetic process [47,48]. Large band gap semiconductor materials can be effectively sensitized by such molecules, thus allowing the design of light energy conversion devices [49,50].…”

Facile synthesis of chlorophyll analog possessing a disulfide bond and formation of self-assembled monolayer on gold surface

“…Both Soret and Q y bands in the spectrum of the chlorins on the gold plate were red-shifted relative to those of 1 in acetone. Such red-shifts in visible absorption spectra were reported in the cases of porphyrins [16,18] and Chls [4,6,34] on solid substrates. Small red-shift (<10 nm) of absorption bands on a substrate indicates that strong excitonic interaction would not exist among chlorin rings, because J-type self-aggregation of Chl molecules exhibited a large red-shift of both Soret and Q y bands [11,12,[24][25][26]28,29].…”

“…Immobilization of photofunctional molecules on substrates is a key step in constructing photodevices toward artificial photosynthesis. In view of this point, arrangements of photofunctional molecules in Langmuir-Blodgett (LB) membranes [4][5][6][7][8][9][10] and castfilms [11,12] have been demonstrated.…”

“…Chls appropriately organized in the systems absorb sunlight well and convert the light into chemical energy with high efficiency. On the basis of these points, Chls and their analogs were self-assembled in various solutions [24][25][26][27][28][29] and on substrates [4,6,11,12,30] toward artificial photosynthesis. However, there is no investigation, to our knowledge, on SAM of chlorophyllous pigments, although Chl analogs forming SAM could be promising materials for intelligent photoactive devices.…”

Assembly of extramembranous light-harvesting complexes of green sulfur photosynthetic bacterium Chlorobium tepidum on glass surface by electrostatic layer-by-layer adsorption

“…One approach for construction of such photoactive devices is highly ordered immobilization of photofunctional molecules in relation to photosynthesis. From this viewpoint, chlorophyll [3][4][5][6][7][8] and porphyrin derivatives [9][10][11][12] have been assembled on solid surfaces by cast, Langmuir -Blodgett and selfassembled monolayer methodologies.…”