Co-grafting of porphyrins and fullerenes on ZnO nanorods: Towards supramolecular donor–acceptor assembly

This work presents the synthesis and physico-chemical characterization of a novel artificial photosynthetic design, using anisotropic semiconducting nanorods as scaffolds to assemble organic donor–acceptor complexes on their surface. These hierarchical hybrid D–A assemblies were obtained by the co-grafting of porphyrins and fullerenes on the ZnO nanorods. Polarity of the solvent and porphyrin to fullerene ratios were investigated to be markedly influencing the donor–acceptor interaction under the co-grafted conditions on ZnO nanorods. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, electronic absorption and fluorescence spectroscopic techniques were used to characterize the formation and investigate the optoelectronic properties of porphyrin–fullerene complexes on the surface of ZnO. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example of highly interacting porphyrin–fullerene complexes on ZnO nanorods, which may allow generating efficient nanosystems for artificial photosynthesis and harvesting of solar energy.

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► Functionalization of ZnO nanocrystals with porphyrin and fullerenes via carboxylic functionality.
► ZnO nanorods act as effective scaffolds for organic donor–acceptor complexes.
► Polarity of solvent plays a vital role in porphyrin–fullerenes interaction on the surface of ZnO.
► ZnO nanorods get perfectly aligned upon co-grafting of donor and acceptor moities.
► CT absorption and emission bands appear at P/F ratio of 1:3 and attain maximum intensity at a ratio of 1:6.