New light-harvesting roles of hot and forbidden carotenoid states in artificial photosynthetic constructs

We present results from fluorescence excitation and transient absorption spectroscopy on a series of artificial light harvesting dyads made up of a zinc phthalocyanine (Pc) covalently linked through a phenylamine to carotenoids (Car) with 8, 9, 10 or 11 conjugated double bonds, referred to as dyads 8-11. In dyad-10 and dyad-11, the energy transfer efficiency from the carotenoid