(Invited) Discovering Bottlenecks and Opportunities in Hybrid Solar Light Harvesting Systems By Ultrafast X-Ray Spectroscopy
Authors: Gessner Oliver 
Published: July 2022

A prerequisite for advancing hybrid solar light harvesting systems is a comprehensive understanding of photoinduced electronic dynamics across a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Time-resolved spectroscopy techniques in the optical domain have proven instrumental in identifying critical timescales of fundamental processes, such as interfacial charge transfer, charge migration, and carrier lifetimes, which are intimately linked to a system's performance. New light source and instrument developments open opportunities to extend such studies into the X-ray regime. Due to their inherent elemental specificity and sensitivity to local electronic environments, time-domain X-ray spectroscopy techniques are uniquely suited to gain a microscopic picture of dynamics from well-defined reporter sites within often complex nanoscale light harvesting architectures. We will present new insights into fundamental photoinduced dynamics in several archetypical heterostructures based on femtosecond and picosecond time-resolved X-ray photoemission spectroscopy (TRXPS).

The photoinduced transient charge redistribution in the model hybrid system of nanoporous zinc oxide (ZnO) sensitized by ruthenium bipyridyl chromophores is probed independently from the viewpoints of the molecular electron donor and the semiconductor acceptor.[1] Charge injection from the chromophore into the semiconductor is found to proceed via a transiently populated interfacial charge transfer (ICT) complex on an overall timescale of ~300 ps. Our results show that, even after release from the ICT states into the ZnO conduction band, the injected electrons remain localized within less than 6 nm from the interface, due to enhanced downward band-bending by the photo-injected charge carriers. This spatial confinement suggests that light-induced charge generation and transport in nanoscale ZnO photocatalytic devices proceeds predominantly within the defect-rich surface region, which may lead to enhanced surface recombination and explain their lower performance compared to titanium dioxide (TiO2)-based systems. The quantitative nature and surface sensitivity of TRXPS also provides direct access to the spatial separation of the holes remaining on the bipyridyl chromophores after charge injection from the semiconductor surface with sub-nm precision.

Complementary femtosecond and picosecond TRXPS studies of photoinduced dynamics in copper-phthalocyanine(CuPc)-C60 heterojunctions provide a deeper understanding of both exciton migration pathways toward the interface as well as the absolute efficiency by which ICT states dissociate into separate charges.[2] The measurements reveal surprisingly efficient charge generation from triplet excitons and from the lowest lying ICT states, both of which were previously believed to be inactive during light-to-charge conversion.

Photoinduced charge transfer dynamics between spherical gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and a nanoporous film of TiO2 is monitored by picosecond TRXPS, providing direct access to the absolute photon-to-charge conversion efficiency and subsequent electron-hole recombination dynamics.[3] Preliminary results will be presented for the extension of the measurements into the ambient pressure regime, taking a first step toward the study of photoinduced interfacial chemistry by TRXPS in this model system for nanoplasmonic light harvesting applications.

[1] S. Neppl et al., “Nanoscale Confinement of Photo-Injected Electrons at Hybrid Interfaces”, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 12, 11951 (2021).

[2] F. Roth et al., “Direct observation of charge separation in an organic light harvesting system by femtosecond time-resolved XPS”, Nat. Commun. 12, 1196 (2021).

[3] M. Borgwardt et al., “Photoinduced Charge Carrier Dynamics and Electron Injection Efficiencies in Au Nanoparticle-Sensitized TiO2 Determined with Picosecond Time-Resolved X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy”, J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 11, 5476 (2020).

Figure 1