A Symmetry‐Broken Charge‐Separated State in the Marcus Inverted Region

Abstract

AbstractWe report a long‐lived charge‐separated state in a chromophoric pair (DC‐PDI2) that uniquely integrates the advantages of fundamental processes of photosynthetic reaction centers: i) Symmetry‐breaking charge‐separation (SB‐CS) and ii) Marcus‐inverted‐region dependence. The near‐orthogonal bichromophoric DC‐PDI2 manifests an ultrafast evolution of the SB‐CS state with a time constant of =0.35±0.02 ps and a slow charge recombination (CR) kinetics with =4.09±0.01 ns in ACN. The rate constant of CR of DC‐PDI2 is 11 686 times slower than SB‐CS in ACN, as the CR of the PDI radical ion‐pair occurs in the deep inverted region of the Marcus parabola ( >λ). In contrast, an analogous benzyloxy (BnO)‐substituted DC‐BPDI2 showcases a ≈10‐fold accelerated CR kinetics with lowering to ≈1536 in ACN, by virtue of a decreased CR driving force. The present investigation demonstrates a control of molecular engineering to tune the energetics and kinetics of the SB‐CS material, which is essential for next‐generation optoelectronic devices.