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workers on energy and electron transfer from OPV-function-
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prompted us to investigate on the potential of OPV based
organogels for the purpose of energy transfer and light
harvesting.[10]
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Small-molecule-based organogels have attracted much
attention in recent years because of their interesting physical
properties and architectural elegance.[11] However, organo-
gels based on p-conjugated systems are relatively very few.[12]
Recently, we have reported hydrogen-bond- and p-stack-
induced supramolecular assembly of the OPV derivatives
1a,b, which leads to the formation of entangled nanostruc-
tures, which induce gelation of hydrocarbon solvents.[13] The
absorption and emission properties of 1a,b showed dramatic
changes during gelation, which is an indication of strong
intermolecular p-electronic coupling of the ordered self-
assembled OPV gel. Excitation of 1a,b in cyclohexane at 380
and 470 nm revealed the emission corresponding to the
monomeric species (lem ¼ 455 and 483 nm, Ff ¼ 0.40 ꢁ 0.01
Light Harvesting with Gels
Gelation-Assisted Light Harvesting by Selective
Energy Transfer from an Oligo(p-
phenylenevinylene)-Based Self-Assembly to an
Organic Dye**
Ayyappanpillai Ajayaghosh,* Subi J. George, and
Vakayil K. Praveen
Dedicated to the memory of Darshan Ranganathan
Excitation energy transfer within and between
molecular systems plays an important role in
natural processes, such as photosynthesis. In this
context, there has been widespread interest in
mimicking the mechanism of solar-energy har-
vesting of natural photosynthesis with the aid of
synthetic molecular systems. Apart from this,
photoinduced energy transfer has become sig-
nificant in the area of photovoltaics, organic
light-emitting diodes, fluorescent labeling, and
in a variety of photonic devices. In most of these
cases, energy transfer is considerably influenced
[*] Dr. A. Ajayaghosh, S. J. George, V. K. Praveen
PhotochemistryResearch Unit
related to quinine sulfate, t ¼ 1.46 ns;Figure 1, spectrum b)
and self-assembled species (lem ¼ 525 and 565 nm, Ff ¼ 0.40 ꢁ
0.01 related to Rhodamine 6G, t ¼ 1.62 ns;Figure 1, spec-
trum c), which showed strong dependency on solvent polarity
and temperature.
Herein we describe an interesting case of a thermorever-
sible fluorescence-resonance energy transfer (FRET) and
light harvesting, exclusively from OPV based supramolecular
gel nanostructures of 1a,b to an organic dye. To study the
feasibility of such an energy transfer, we chose Rhodamine B
as the acceptor, the absorption (lmax ¼ 555 nm) of which
Regional Research Laboratory, CSIR
Trivandrum-695019 (India)
Fax: (þ91)471-490-186
E-mail: aajayaghosh@rediffmail.com
[**] This work was supported bythe Department of Science and
Technology, Government of India under the Swarnajayanti scheme
(DST/SF/C6/99-2000). We thank Mr. P. Prabhakar Rao for SEM
analysis and CSIR for a research fellowship to S.J.G. This is
contribution number RRLT-PRU-155.
Supporting information for this article is available on the WWW
332
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Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2003, 42, No. 3