Competition between Ultrafast Energy Flow and Electron Transfer in a Ru(II)-Loaded Polyfluorene Light-Harvesting Polymer

This Letter describes the synthesis and photophysical characterization of a Ru(II) assembly consisting of metal polypyridyl complexes linked together by a polyfluorene scaffold. Unlike many scaffolds incorporating saturated linkages, the conjugated polymer in this system acts as a functional light-harvesting component. Conformational disorder breaks the conjugation in the polymer backbone, resulting in a chain composed of many chromophore units, whose relative energies depend on the segment lengths. Photoexcitation of the polyfluorene by a femtosecond laser pulse results in the excitation of polyfluorene, which then undergoes direct energy transfer to the pendant Ru(II) complexes, producing Ru(II)* excited states within 500 fs after photoexcitation. Femtosecond transient absorption data show the presence of electron transfer from PF* to Ru(II) to form charge-separated (CS) products within 1-2 ps. The decay of the oxidized and reduced products, PF(+•) and Ru(I), through back electron transfer are followed using picosecond transient absorption methods.