Supramolecular Organization of Functional Organic Materials in the Bulk and at Organic/Organic Interfaces: A Modeling and Computer Simulation Approach

Computational Design of Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence Materials: The Challenges Ahead

Thermally activated delayed fluorescence (TADF) offers promise for all-organic light-emitting diodes with quantum efficiencies competing with those of transition-metal-based phosphorescent devices. While computational efforts have so far largely focused on gas-phase calculations of singlet and triplet excitation energies, the design of TADF materials requires multiple methodological developments targeting among others a quantitative description of electronic excitation energetics, fully accounting for environmental electrostatics and molecular conformational effects, the accurate assessment of the quantum mechanical interactions that trigger the elementary electronic processes involved in TADF, and a robust picture for the dynamics of these fundamental processes. In this Perspective, we describe some recent progress along those lines and highlight the main challenges ahead for modeling, which we hope will be useful to the whole TADF community.

Predicting the Conditions for Homeotropic Anchoring of Liquid Crystals at a Soft Surface. 4-n-Pentyl-4'-cyanobiphenyl on Alkylsilane Self-Assembled Monolayers

We have studied, using atomistic molecular dynamics simulations, the alignment of the nematic liquid-crystal 4-n-pentyl-4'-cyanobiphenyl (5CB) on self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) formed from octadecyl- and/or hexyltrichlorosilane (OTS and HTS) attached to glassy silica. We find a planar alignment on OTS at full coverage and an intermediate situation at partial OTS coverage because of the penetration of 5CB molecules into the monolayer, which also removes the tilt of the OTS SAM. Binary mixtures of HTS and OTS SAMs instead induce homeotropic (i.e., perpendicular) alignment. A comparison with the existing experimental literature is provided.

Electrostatic phenomena in organic semiconductors: fundamentals and implications for photovoltaics

This review summarizes the current understanding of electrostatic phenomena in ordered and disordered organic semiconductors, outlines numerical schemes developed for quantitative evaluation of electrostatic and induction contributions to ionization potentials and electron affinities of organic molecules in a solid state, and illustrates two applications of these techniques: interpretation of photoelectron spectroscopy of thin films and energetics of heterointerfaces in organic solar cells.

Impact of mesoscale order on open-circuit voltage in organic solar cells

Structural order in organic solar cells is paramount: it reduces energetic disorder, boosts charge and exciton mobilities, and assists exciton splitting. Owing to spatial localization of electronic states, microscopic descriptions of photovoltaic processes tend to overlook the influence of structural features at the mesoscale. Long-range electrostatic interactions nevertheless probe this ordering, making local properties depend on the mesoscopic order. Using a technique developed to address spatially aperiodic excitations in thin films and in bulk, we show how inclusion of mesoscale order resolves the controversy between experimental and theoretical results for the energy-level profile and alignment in a variety of photovoltaic systems, with direct experimental validation. Optimal use of long-range ordering also rationalizes the acceptor-donor-acceptor paradigm for molecular design of donor dyes. We predict open-circuit voltages of planar heterojunction solar cells in excellent agreement with experimental data, based only on crystal structures and interfacial orientation.

Predicting the switchable screw sense in fluorene-based polymers

A chirality-switching free-energy landscape was reconstructed on a 43-mer of poly(9,9-dioctylfluoren-2,7-diyl) (PDOF). The simulations were conducted on amorphous silica surface as well as in the vacuum phase for a single chain or for a group of sixteen chains. The achiral-to-chiral transition occurs only on amorphous silica (activation free-energy 35 kcal mol(-1) ), where the enantiomeric (homochiral) basins are detected. This was supported by the experiments where effective chirality induction to PDOF using circularly polarized light (CPL) was attained only for a film deposited on a quartz glass and not for a solution or a suspension. These results indicate that interactions of PDOF with amorphous silica play a crucial role in chirality switching. Importance of chain assembling was also indicated. Theoretical ECD spectra of the enantiomeric basins containing a 51 helix reproduce the experimental spectra.