- Roth, Friedrich;
- Neppl, Stefan;
- Shavorskiy, Andrey;
- Arion, Tiberiu;
- Mahl, Johannes;
- Seo, Hyun Ook;
- Bluhm, Hendrik;
- Hussain, Zahid;
- Gessner, Oliver;
- Eberhardt, Wolfgang
The success of many emerging molecular electronics concepts hinges on an atomistic understanding of the underlying electronic dynamics. We employ picosecond time-resolved x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (tr-XPS) to elucidate the roles of singlet and triplet excitons for photoinduced charge generation at a copper-phthalocyanine-C60 heterojunction. Contrary to common belief, fast intersystem crossing to triplet excitons after photoexcitation is not a loss channel but contributes to a significantly larger extent to the time-integrated interfacial charge generation than the initially excited singlet excitons. The tr-XPS data provide direct access to the diffusivity of the triplet excitons DCuPc=(1.8±1.2)×10-5cm2/s (where CuPc is copper-phthalocyanine) and their diffusion length Ldiff=(8±3)nm.