Femtosecond IR Study of Excited-State Relaxation and Electron-Injection Dynamics of Ru(dcbpy)2(NCS)2 in Solution and on Nanocrystalline TiO2 and Al2O3 Thin Films

TLDR: In this paper, the photophysics and electron injection dynamics of Ru(dcbpy)2(NCS)2 [DCbpy = (4,4‘-dicarboxy-2,2, 2,2'bipyridine)] (or Ru N3) in solution and adsorbed on nanocrystalline Al2O3 and TiO2 thin films were studied by femtosecond mid-IR spectroscopy.

Abstract: The photophysics and electron injection dynamics of Ru(dcbpy)2(NCS)2 [dcbpy = (4,4‘-dicarboxy-2,2‘-bipyridine)] (or Ru N3) in solution and adsorbed on nanocrystalline Al2O3 and TiO2 thin films were studied by femtosecond mid-IR spectroscopy. For Ru N3 in ethanol after 400 nm excitation, the long-lived metal-to-ligand charge transfer (3MLCT) excited state with CN stretching bands at 2040 cm-1 was formed in less than 100 fs. No further decay of the excited-state absorption was observed within 1 ns consistent with the previously known 59 ns lifetime. For Ru N3 absorbed on Al2O3, an insulating substrate, the 3MLCT state was also formed in less than 100 fs. In contrast to Ru N3 in ethanol, this excited state decayed by 50% within 1 ns via multiple exponential decay while no ground-state recovery was observed. This decay is attributed to electron transfer to surface states in the band gap of Al2O3 nanoparticles. For Ru N3 adsorbed onto the surface of TiO2, the transient mid-IR signal was dominated by the IR abs...