Customized electronic coupling in self-assembled donor-acceptor nanostructures

Charge transfer processes between donor-acceptor complexes and metallic electrodes are at the heart of novel organic optoelectronic devices such as solar cells. Here, a combined approach of surface-sensitive microscopy, synchrotron radiation spectroscopy, and state-of-the-art ab initio calculations is used to demonstrate the delicate balance that exists between intermolecular and molecule-substrate interactions, hybridization, and charge transfer in model donor-acceptor assemblies at metal-organic interfaces. It is shown that charge transfer and chemical properties of interfaces based on single component layers cannot be naively extrapolated to binary donor-acceptor assemblies. In particular, studying the self-assembly of supramolecular nanostructures on Cu(111), composed of iuorinated copperphthalocyanines (F₁₆CuPc) and diindenoperylene (DIP), it is found that, in reference to the associated single component layers, the donor (DIP) decouples electronically from the metal surface, while the acceptor (F₁₆CuPc) suffers strong hybridization with the substrate