Real-space investigation of energy transfer in heterogeneous molecular dimers

Given its central role in photosynthesis and artificial energy-harvesting devices, energy transfer has been widely studied using optical spectroscopy to monitor excitation dynamics and probe the molecular-level control of energy transfer between coupled molecules. However, the spatial resolution of conventional optical spectroscopy is limited to a few hundred nanometres and thus cannot reveal the nanoscale spatial features associated with such processes. In contrast, scanning tunnelling luminescence spectroscopy has revealed the energy dynamics associated with phenomena ranging from single-molecule electroluminescence, absorption of localized plasmons and quantum interference effects to energy delocalization and intervalley electron scattering with submolecular spatial resolution in real space. Here we apply this technique to individual molecular dimers that comprise a magnesium phthalocyanine and a free-base phthalocyanine (MgPc and H₂Pc) and find that locally exciting MgPc with the tunnelling current of the scanning tunnelling microscope generates a luminescence signal from a nearby H₂Pc molecule as a result of resonance energy transfer from the former to the latter. A reciprocating resonance energy transfer is observed when exciting the second singlet state (S₂) of H₂Pc, which results in energy transfer to the first singlet state (S₁) of MgPc and final funnelling to the S₁ state of H₂Pc. We also show that tautomerization of H₂Pc changes the energy transfer characteristics within the dimer system, which essentially makes H₂Pc a single-molecule energy transfer valve device that manifests itself by blinking resonance energy transfer behaviour.