Very fast single-step photoinduced charge separation in zinc porphyrin bridged to a gold porphyrin by a bisethynyl quaterthiophene.

A new heterometallic dyad composed of a zinc porphyrin linked by bisethynyl quaterthiophene to a gold porphyrin was synthesized according to a stepwise modular approach. The latter dyad and the parent reference compounds (porphyrin-ethynylquaterthiophene) were characterized by electrochemistry, spectroelectrochemistry, and femtosecond transient absorption spectrocopy. We showed that light excitation of the zinc or the gold porphyrin induces a very fast and quantitative charge separation over a distance of 25 A which occurs through a superexchange mechanism. The lifetime of the charge-separated state is 3.3 ns in toluene and 100 ps in dichloromethane, and it recombines to the ground state in both solvents.