Résumé
The storage of sunlight into chemical bonds is an appealing strategy to practically exploit solar energy. The reaction centers of natural photosynthesis have inspired numerous efforts to mimic their working principles with the aim to develop our fundamental understanding as well as to explore possibilities for future renewable fuels technologies. To efficiently accomplish useful chemical transformations with sunlight, such as water splitting, the photocatalyst must fulfill two crucial functions. The first one if the production of a high energy charge separated state with sunlight and the second is to accumulate multiple redox equivalents to perform multi-electronic redox reactions. The production of such a state with a single photon of the visible spectrum represents a difficult endeavor. In this talk, it will be presented the development of molecular and hybrid systems, composed of dye and semiconductor such as TiO2, which feature charge photoaccumulation [1] and Z-scheme [2] functions. Our proof-of-principle results demonstrate the capability to translate crucial biological functions of the photosynthetic reaction center with manmade molecular systems, representing important steps towards artificial photosynthesis.