<p>We propose a
general high-throughput virtual screening approach for the optical and
electronic properties of conjugated polymers. This approach makes use of the
recently developed xTB family of low-computational-cost density functional
tight-binding methods from Grimme and co-workers, calibrated here to (TD-)DFT
data computed for a representative diverse set of (co-)polymers. Parameters
drawn from the resulting calibration using a linear model can then be applied
to the xTB derived results for new polymers, thus generating near DFT-quality
data with orders of magnitude reduction in computational cost. As a result,
after an initial computational investment for calibration, this approach can be
used to quickly and accurately screen on the order of thousands of polymers for
target applications. We also demonstrate that the (opto)electronic properties
of the conjugated polymers show only a very minor variation when considering
different conformers and that the results of high-throughput screening are therefore
expected to be relatively insensitive with respect to the conformer search
methodology applied.</p>