Theoretical Investigations of the Photophysical Properties of Chromophoric Metal-Organic Frameworks
Creators: name: Batra, Kamal
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2021
Subjects: Computational Chemistry

description: For inorganic semiconductors such as silicon, crystalline order leads to bands in the electronic structure which give rise to drastic differences with respect to disordered materials. Distinct band features lead to photo-effect, and the band structure can be tuned to optimize the performance of the photovoltaic (PV) device. An example is the presence of an indirect band gap. For organic semiconductors, such effects are typically precluded, since most organic materials employed are disordered, which hampers their characterization and theoretical analysis. The inspiration for this thesis came from the very first evidence of an indirect band gap exhibited by highly ordered and crystalline porphyrin-based surface-mounted metal-organic framework (PP-based SURMOF) material [J. Liu et al. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2015, 54, 7441]. The presence of an indirect band gap should in principle result in suppressed charge recombination and efficient charge separations which would significantly enhance the PV device performance. However, the energy gain from the electronic band dispersion in the reported Pd-PP-Zn-SURMOF is far too low (≈5 meV) and results in a very low photocurrent generation (efficiency 0.2%), which is certainly not sufficient for the application. Another noticeable shortcoming is the weakly absorbing Q-bands of the employed PP chromophore (Pd-metal containing porphyrinoid, Pd-PP) in the visible region of the solar spectrum. Nevertheless, this novel research has highlighted the potential to improve the photophysical properties of PP-based SURMOFs by (i) introducing various functional groups or metal ions to the PP-core and (ii) controlling the PP-stacking behavior in layered materials. To overcome the posed shortcomings of the PP-MOF prototype PV material and to exploit the potential of PP-based SURMOFs, we have employed the following approach to increase the light absorption and the electronic band dispersion. Firstly, we proposed a computationally feasible simplified time-dependent approach to investigate the light absorption properties of PP derivatives or related PP-containing materials. Secondly, we predicted the light absorption properties of multi-functionalized PPs (i.e. tuning the weakly absorbing Q-bands), thus allowing us to identify different PP linkers with different light absorption properties, allowing to bridge the so-called green gap. Finally, we incorporated the most promising PP linkers for the construction of SURMOFs and applied state-of-the-art DFT methods in various approximations to optimize the PP-stacking behavior to achieve the desired photophysical properties. Besides PPs, we have extended our investigations to phthalocyanines (PCs) as alternative individual SURMOF building blocks, because they do not only exhibit structural robustness and stability but also possess enhanced absorption in the visible and the near IR spectral regions in comparison to PPs. Hence, the exploitation of PCs could enrich the library of SURMOFs with the desired optical quality.