Design, synthesis, and comparison of organic macrocyclic nanoscale systems for solar cell applications

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There are several applications that take advantage of the light-emitting properties of nanoscale systems, with diodes and lasers, single-photon sources, and bio-labels being notable examples. Additionally, however, a growing and very important area of application for these same materials is in the field of renewable energy and the harvesting of solar photons. For this application, rather complex blends of 'soft materials' are fabricated to serve the purposes of capturing incident light and converting that energy ultimately to electrical energy. Researchers believe that nanoscale systems are well-suited for this purpose because they are highly tunable and are easily processible. The challenge is to learn how to control and direct the evolution of the special quantum states that store the energy of the captured light. These states live for, at most, only nanoseconds before they disintegrate to heat, and during their brief lifetime they evolve in highly complicated ways. By learning to control these ultrafast processes occurring on the length scale of molecules, we will be able design means of