The role of solar power as a renewable energy source is of ever increasing importance to our future. It is inevitable then that the focus of much research would be looking at nature’s solutions to solar power with photosynthesis. A theoretical paper published by Creatore et al. titled "Efficient Biologically Inspired Photocell Enhanced by Delocalized Quantum States" looks at a way around the problems that plague attempts to reproduce what biological systems do so well. Their design however tried to achieve this by exploiting transition dipole coupling between two donor molecules and an acceptor, based on well understood phenomena, instead of difficult to reproduce coherences. This should theoretically result in an approximately 35% increase in photocurrent as compared to the same systems without coupling. The focus of this research was to create a novel cofacial porphyrin dimer system to function as the donor pair in the Creatore et al. model. A side-bridge of aliphatic carbons linking two porphyrin molecules together was synthesized. It was expected that with zinc centers in these porphyrins, addition of bipyridine would create a rigid cofacial system. The tests with nonside-bridged and bipyridine showed expected behavior for a cofacial system. The side-bridged samples however did not show any sign of the expected coupling, instead showing signs of aggregation of the porphyrin samples with the addition of bipyridine. Further exploration into the dyad made of different lengths and the obtainment of crystal structures are required.
