Study of charge transfer processes in porphyrins- and phthalocyanins-based materials: from the liquid phase to the solid state

In order to efficiently conceive and build supramolecular materials for molecular electronics and optoelectronics, one need to have access to a large data base on the interactions between the elementary pieces of the material. Such a data base can be established only through the study of model Systems and model media. Oligomers of porphyrins and phthalocyanines constitute models of choice: due to the chemical versatility of the compounds, their physical and photophysical properties can be adjusted to produce a targeted function. The first part of this thesis is concerned with double- and triple-Decker mixed porphyrin and Phthalocyanines sandwich compounds of cerium. Then we study the photophysical properties of complexes formed by pairing in solution porphyrins and phthalocyanines bearing oppositely charged substituents. The charge transfer reactions and geminated recombinations are investigated by time-resolved absorption spectroscopy (from the femto- to millisecond time scales) for excited complexes either in solution, or confined in sol-gel matrices or in Langmuir-Blodgett films. The results obtained in the various media are compared and analysed by the Marcus theory. They allow to show that, for strongly coupled complexes, the solvent does not play any key role in the forward and backward electron transfer. We conclude this work by introducing a few targeted projects based on of the photophysical properties of these complexes, namely photodynamic therapy of cancers, nonlinear optics and the generation of photovoltage. (author)