2019/09/09
Keio University
Kobe University
A research group, including Associate Professor Taku Hasobe and Senior Assistant Professor Hayato Sakai from the Faculty of Science and Technology at Keio University, Toshiyuki Saegusa (who completed his master's degree in 2019) from the Graduate School of Science and Technology, and Professor Yasuhiro Kobori and Postdoctoral Fellow Hiroki Nagashima from the Molecular Photoscience Research Center at Kobe University, has revealed that when their originally developed tetracene alkanethiol-modified gold nanoclusters are irradiated with light, the number of photons absorbed by the tetracene molecules can be converted into double the number of excitons. They also found that these generated excitons have a lifetime approximately 10,000 times longer than that of conventional organic molecules on a gold surface. Furthermore, the group succeeded in the highly efficient conversion of singlet oxygen (a type of reactive oxygen species), which is useful for photodynamic therapy (light-based cancer treatment) and organic synthesis, at a rate of 160%—far exceeding 100%—relative to the number of absorbed photons.
In the future, these findings are expected to contribute to fields such as solar energy conversion, electronics, and life/medical sciences. This research was published in the online edition of the American scientific journal "Journal of the American Chemical Society" on September 6.
Please see below for the full press release.