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

有几种应用利用纳米系统的发光特性，二极管和激光器，单光子源和生物标签是值得注意的例子。然而，此外，这些材料的一个不断增长的非常重要的应用领域是可再生能源和太阳光子的收集领域。对于这种应用，制造了相当复杂的“软材料”混合物，以达到捕获入射光并将该能量最终转换为电能的目的。研究人员认为，纳米系统非常适合这一目的，因为它们是高度可调的，并且易于加工。挑战在于学习如何控制和指导存储捕获光能量的特殊量子态的演化。这些状态在分解成热之前最多只存在几纳秒，在它们短暂的生命周期中，它们以高度复杂的方式演化。通过学习控制这些发生在分子长度尺度上的超快过程，我们将能够设计出

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