The Impact of Twisting on the Intersystem Crossing in Acenes: An Experimental and Computational Study

Due to their unique excited state dynamics, acenes play a dominant role in optoelectronic and light-harvesting applications. Their optical and electronic properties are typically tailored by side-group engineering, which often...

Methods to Calculate Electronic Excited-state Dynamics For Molecules on Large Metal Clusters with Many States: Ensuring Fast Overlap Calculations and a Robust Choice of Phase

We present an efficient set of methods for propagating excited-state dynamics involving a large number of electronic states based on a CIS electronic state overlap scheme. Specifically, (i) following Head-Gordon et al, we implement an exact evaluation of the overlap of singly-excited electronic states at different nuclear geometries using a biorthogonal basis, and (ii) we employ a unified protocol for choosing the correct phase for each adiabat at each geometry. For many-electron systems, the combination of these techniques significantly reduces the computational cost of integrating the electronic Schrodinger equation and imposes minimal overhead on top of the underlying electronic structure calculation. As a demonstration, we calculate the electronic excited-state dynamics for a hydrogen molecule scattering off a silver metal cluster, focusing on high-lying excited states where many electrons can be excited collectively and crossings are plentiful. Interestingly, we find that the high-lying, plasmon-like collective excitation spectrum changes with nuclear dynamics, highlighting the need to simulate non-adiabatic nuclear dynamics and plasmonic excitations simultaneously. In the future, the combination of methods presented here should help theorists build a mechanistic understanding of plasmon-assisted charge transfer and excitation energy relaxation processes near a nanoparticle or metal surface.

Controlling the Twisted Intramolecular Charge-Transfer Character of Pyrene Derivatives Through Solvent Polarity

Intramolecular charge transfer (ICT) plays a critical role in determining the photophysical properties of organic molecules, including their luminescence efficiencies. Twisted intramolecular charge transfer (TICT) is a process in which structural change accompanies ICT. Despite significant research, the relationship between TICT and solvent polarity, and its effects on photophysical properties, have been rarely investigated. Herein, we used time-resolved spectroscopy to study TICT in pyrene derivatives that are promising blue organic light emitting diode (OLED) emitter candidates; these derivatives show strong solvent-dependent charge-transfer (CT) behavior. Slight structural changes that do not affect excited state dynamics were observed in nonpolar solvents, while polar solvents were found to affect excited state dynamics and CT characteristics. The TICT behavior of these pyrene derivatives could be modulated through structural modification. Our study provides valuable guidelines for the control of optical properties, including the luminescence efficiencies of OLED emitters that show TICT characteristics.