The role of driving energy and delocalized States for charge separation in organic semiconductors.

The electron-hole pair created via photon absorption in organic photoconversion systems must overcome the Coulomb attraction to achieve long-range charge separation. We show that this process is facilitated through the formation of excited, delocalized band states. In our experiments on organic photovoltaic cells, these states were accessed for a short time (<1 picosecond) via infrared (IR) optical excitation of electron-hole pairs bound at the heterojunction.

Femtosecond midinfrared study of aggregation behavior in aqueous solutions of amphiphilic molecules.

We study the spectral and orientational dynamics of HDO molecules in aqueous solutions of different concentrations of tertiary butyl alcohol (TBA) and trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO). The spectral dynamics is investigated with femtosecond two-dimensional infrared spectroscopy of the O-H stretch vibration of HDO:D(2)O, and the orientational dynamics is studied with femtosecond polarization-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy of the O-D stretch vibration of HDO:H(2)O. Both the spectral and orientational dynamics are observed to show bimodal behavior: part of the water molecules shows spectral and orientational dynamics similar to bulk liquid water and part of the water molecules displays a much slower dynamics.