Nanometric scale photoactive polymer systems

Sun is the most powerful source of clean, cheap and environmentally friendly source of energy, but still, the usage of this resource cover less than 1% of current world energy requirements [1]. However, nature realizes efficient conversion of solar energy to chemical energy on mass scale in different photoactivated processes like photosynthesis, which are essential for our life on this planet. The process takes place in green parts of plants with exceptional efficiency and precision. Natural photosystems like that attract attention to many researchers to develop artificial energy conversion devices. Many photoactive materials (polymers, nanostructures and small molecules) exhibiting high solar energy conversion and catalytic activity have been synthesized and rapidly applied in fields like pollutant removal [2] or solar cells [3]. Although significant development of artificial devices that can mimic natural processes have been achieved, their commercialization still remains a problem. Construction of molecular structure that can mimic natural photosystems is very challenging with regard to synthetic chemistry and impossibility of use the “top – down” methods which cannot reach the molecular level. Generally, photoactive materials have low stability and short lifetime due to their oxidative and aqueous degradation and decomposition under high intensity of light [4]. One of the most challenging problems during designing of artificial photosystems is directionality of excitation energy transfer along properly ordered chromophores. What is more, the mechanism of energy migration often cannot be described using well-known Förster or Dexter theories [5]. This work will focus on the selected artificial photosystems based on polymers. First, short theory of energy transport is presented, followed by description of devices based on multilayered films, repairable polymeric systems, nanohybrids of carbon nanotubes and photoactive polymers, light harvesting conjugated microporous polymers and polymer brushes