Incorporation of graphene oxide to metal-free phthalocyanine through hydrogen bonding for optoelectronic applications: An experimental and computational study

Abstract

This paper focuses on incorporation of graphene oxide (GO) to metal-free phthalocyanine (MPc) through only hydrogen bonding and π-π stacking. Briefly, Pc-GO composites at various concentrations were prepared by selfassembly method. The processing time was kept below 10 min to avoid covalent attachment and we aimed at answering the research question of what will happen if the conjugation is realized only through hydrogen bonding under extremely limited processing times. The as-prepared MPc-GO composites were characterized by Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), UV-Vis, scanning electron microscope (SEM), and fluorescence analysis. We report that the interaction between MPc and GO could immediately be initiated upon mixing of corresponding solutions. Also, complete conjugation by hydrogen bonding andπ-π stacking could be reached even only in 5 min of sonication time. In addition, it was also determined that the prepared MPc-GO composites are stable at room conditions and during dilution. Finally, the optoelectronic properties of MPc and MPc-GO composites were also investigated experimentally and theoretically. Both experimental and theoretical results suggest that MPc-GO composites exhibit improved optoelectronic properties as compared to MPc, even though the conjugation of GO to MPc was only via hydrogen bonding without covalent attachment.