The effect of chloride or bromide ion coordination to a doubly-linked zinc porphyrin-fullerene dyad was studied by quantitative analysis of the absorption band in the red and near infrared spectral range. The absorption band in question corresponds to the direct excitation to the intramolecular exciplex and it can be analyzed using the semi-quantum charge transfer theory. Compared to the nonligated compounds the energy of the exciplex decreased by similar to 0.3 eV and the oscillator strength of the transition increased by similar to 15-20%. This is explained by the effect of the electric field created by the negative charge of the halide. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.