Photoisomerization efficiency of a solar thermal fuel in the strong coupling regime

Strong exciton-photon coupling is achieved when the interaction between molecules and an electromagnetic field is increased to a level where they cannot be treated as separate systems. This leads to the formation of polaritonic states and an effective rearrangement of the potential energy surfaces,...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Mony, Jürgen, Climent i Biescas, Claudia, Petersen, Anne Ugleholdt, Moth-Poulsen, Kasper, Feist, Johannes, Börjesson, Karl
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2021
País:España
Institución:Universidad Autónoma de Madrid
Repositorio:Biblos-e Archivo. Repositorio Institucional de la UAM
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:repositorio.uam.es:10486/699143
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10486/699143
https://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202010737
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Energy storage
Photoisomerization quantum yields
Photoswitches
Polaritonic chemistry
Potential energy surfaces
Solar fuels
Strong coupling
Física
Descripción
Sumario:Strong exciton-photon coupling is achieved when the interaction between molecules and an electromagnetic field is increased to a level where they cannot be treated as separate systems. This leads to the formation of polaritonic states and an effective rearrangement of the potential energy surfaces, which opens the possibility to modify photochemical reactions. This work investigates how the strong coupling regime is affecting the photoisomerization efficiency and thermal backconversion of a norbornadiene–quadricyclane molecular photoswitch. The quantum yield of photoisomerization shows both an excitation wavelength and exciton/photon constitution dependence. The polariton-induced decay and energy transfer processes are discussed to be the reason for this finding. Furthermore, the thermal back conversion of the system is unperturbed and the lower polariton effectively shifts the absorption onset to lower energies. The reason for the unperturbed thermal backconversion is that it occurs on the ground state, which is unaffected. This work demonstrates how strong coupling can change material properties towards higher efficiencies in applications. Importantly, the experiments illustrate that strong coupling can be used to optimize the absorption onset of the molecular photoswitch norbonadiene without affecting the back reaction from the uncoupled quadricyclane