Photoinduced multi-electron transfer in the Dn-A system consisting of multi-phthalocyanines linked to one carbon nanotube.

A Dn-A model in which a carbon nanotube (nanoscaled electron acceptor A) is attached with a number of electron donors (Dn), i.e. amino phthalocyanines, was employed to reveal the different nature of photoinduced electron transfer (PeT) in the nanoscaled model from that of a usual one-to-one linked D-A system, which is known to form the single-charge separation state D*+-A*-via well-studied single-electron transfer. For the Dn-A system, however, a one-step multi-electron transfer from multi donors to the same acceptor occurs simultaneously to generate a long-lived multiple-charge separation state Dn*+-A*n- (n>1), which is desirable for efficiently mimicking PSII in photosynthesis.