By Patrick Parkinson in James Kerfoot —

New Paper - Two-Dimensional Diffusion of Excitons in a Perylene Diimide Monolayer Quenched by a Fullerene Heterojunction

James Kerfoot, supervisor Prof. Peter Beton and colleagues at the University of Nottingham have had a paper accepted in J. Phys Chem. C on exciton diffusion in monolayer organic materials in a collaboration with our Manchester group.

Figure showing fullerene monolayers (left) and fullerene on PTCDI layers (right) with high resolution AFM imagery (centre)

In this new work, advanced AFM techniques are coupled to optical micro-spectroscopy to monitor the quenching of excitons in PTCDI by fullerenes on a hexagonal boron nitride substrate. In this experiment James was able to determine the lateral exciton diffusion length in PTCDI to be around 17nm; this is relatively large given the lack of pi-stacking in this architecture.

This study points towards the need for further understanding in exciton migration in 2D assemblies of molecules.

Reference: “Two-Dimensional Diffusion of Excitons in a Perylene Diimide Monolayer Quenched by a Fullerene Heterojunction”, Kerfoot et al., J. Phys. Chem. C, 2019 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.9b01413