Probing coherence in synthetic cyclic light-harvesting pigments.

A series of π-extended cyclic thiophene oligomers of 12, 18, 24, and 30 repeat units have been studied using methods of ultrafast time-resolved absorption, fluorescence upconversion, and three-pulse photon echo. These measurements were conducted in order to examine the structure-function relationships that may affect the coherence between chromophores within the organic macrocycles. Our results indicate that an initial delocalized state can be seen upon excitation of the cyclic thiophenes. Anisotropy measurements show that this delocalized state decays on an ultrafast time scale and is followed by the presence of incoherent hopping. From the use of a phenomenological model, we conclude that our ultrafast anisotropy decay measurements suggest that the system does not reside in the Förster regime and coherence within the system must be considered. Three-pulse photon echo peak shift experiments reveal a clear dependence of initial peak shift with ring size, indicating a weaker coupling to the bath (and stronger intramolecular interactions) as the ring size is increased. Our results suggest that the initial delocalized state increases with ring size to distances (and number of chromophores) comparable to the natural light-harvesting system.