Supramolecular photochemistry and solar cells

Supramolecular photochemistry as well as solar cells are fascinating topics of current interest in Inorganic Photochemistry and very active research f ields which have attracted wide attention in last two decades. A brief outl ine of the investigations in these fields carried out in our Laboratory of Inorganic Photochemistry and Energy Conversion is given here with no attemp t of an exhaustive coverage of the literature. The emphasis is placed on re cent work and information on the above mentioned subjects. Three types of s upramolecular systems have been the focus of this work: (i) cage-type coord ination compounds; (ii) second-sphere coordination compounds, exemplified b y ion-pair photochemistry of cobalt complexes and (iii) covalently-linked s ystems. In the latter, modulation of the photoluminescence and photochemist ry of some rhenium complexes are discussed. Solar energy conversion and dev elopment of thin-layer photoelectrochemical solar cells based on sensitizat ion of nanocrystalline semiconductor films by some ruthenium polypyridyl co mplexes are presented as an important application that resulted from specif ically engineered artificial assemblies.