Coherent Vibronic Wavepackets Show Structure-Directed Charge Flow in Host-Guest Donor-Acceptor Complexes

Designing and controlling charge transfer (CT) pathways in organic semiconductors are important for solar energy applications. To be useful, a photogenerated, Coulombically bound CT exciton must further separate into free charge carriers; direct observations of the detailed CT relaxation pathways, however, are lacking. Here, photoinduced CT and relaxation dynamics in three host-guest complexes, where a perylene (Per) electron donor guest is incorporated into two symmetric and one asymmetric extended viologen cyclophane acceptor hosts, are presented. The central ring in the extended viologen is either p-phenylene (ExV) or electron-rich 2,5-dimethoxy-p-phenylene (ExMeOV), resulting in two symmetric cyclophanes with unsubstituted or methoxy-substituted central rings, ExBox and ExMeOBox, respectively, and an asymmetric cyclophane with one of the central viologen rings being methoxylated ExMeOVBox. Upon photoexcitation, the asymmetric host-guest ExMeOVBox ⊃ Per complex exhibits directional CT toward the energetically unfavorable methoxylated side due to structural restrictions that facilitate strong interactions between the Per donor and the ExMeOV side. The CT state relaxation pathways are probed using ultrafast optical spectroscopy by focusing on coherent vibronic wavepackets, which are used to identify CT relaxations along charge localization and vibronic decoherence coordinates. Specific low- and high-frequency nuclear motions are direct indicators of a delocalized CT state and the degree of CT character. Our results show that the CT pathway can be controlled by subtle chemical modifications of the acceptor host in addition to illustrating how coherent vibronic wavepackets can be used to probe the nature and time evolution of the CT states.