Optical properties and dynamics excitation relaxation in reduced graphene oxide functionalized with nanostructured porphyrins

•FRGO-PN nanocomposites were prepared via a simple chemical method.•Interaction at the interface and structural changes were investigated using TEM, Raman and infrared spectroscopy.•Optical absorption, steady state and time resolved photoluminescence elucidated the interaction between both components.•FRGO had like effect a PL quenching and an increase of the exciton lifetime in porphyrin nanorods.•Our results show an important charge transfer between FRGO and PN.

Few layers of reduced graphene oxide (FRGO) were functionalized with porphyrins self assembled nanostructure. These new hybrid nanocomposites were investigated using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), UV–visible, Raman scattering, Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and photoluminescence. The structural and morphological results show strong interactions between these hybrids components. Moreover, steady state photoluminescence (PL) of both porphyrin nanorods (PN) and (PN)/FRGO composite show clearly the PL quenching confirming a charge transfer from porphyrin molecules to graphene sheets. In addition, the relaxation kinetics of the PN and (PN)/FRGO were studied by means of time resolved photoluminescence (TR-PL) and the excitation density in the sample was of 1017 cm3/pulse. The major change of the carrier dynamics in porphyrin nanorods after their interaction with FRGO was in the increase in the fast time constants, which found to be slower at 650 nm, τ1 = 196 ps and τ2 = 1171 ps. This has been explained by the change in their energy band gap due to the role of FRGO as doping related to the size of the nanometer-scale sp2 clusters, which leads to a slower interband carrier recombination.