Effect of Charge-Transfer State Energy on Charge Generation Efficiency via Singlet Fission in Pentacene-Fullerene Solar Cells

Computational Discovery of Intermolecular Singlet Fission Materials Using Many-Body Perturbation Theory

Intermolecular singlet fission (SF) is the conversion of a photogenerated singlet exciton into two triplet excitons residing on different molecules. SF has the potential to enhance the conversion efficiency of solar cells by harvesting two charge carriers from one high-energy photon, whose surplus energy would otherwise be lost to heat. The development of commercial SF-augmented modules is hindered by the limited selection of molecular crystals that exhibit intermolecular SF in the solid state. Computational exploration may accelerate the discovery of new SF materials. The GW approximation and Bethe-Salpeter equation (GW+BSE) within the framework of many-body perturbation theory is the current state-of-the-art method for calculating the excited-state properties of molecular crystals with periodic boundary conditions. In this Review, we discuss the usage of GW+BSE to assess candidate SF materials as well as its combination with low-cost physical or machine learned models in materials discovery workflows. We demonstrate three successful strategies for the discovery of new SF materials: (i) functionalization of known materials to tune their properties, (ii) finding potential polymorphs with improved crystal packing, and (iii) exploring new classes of materials. In addition, three new candidate SF materials are proposed here, which have not been published previously.

Revealing the reason for the reversal of properties from fullerene to nonfullerene

The existence of an inflection point between fullerene and nonfullerene molecules was demonstrated using bowl-nonfullerene models, which were proposed to explore the key points relating to the different properties. This study explains the differences in the stacking configurations of the inflection points and reveals the reason for the inversion of properties, which is caused by small structural differences.

Natural Charge-Transfer Analysis: Eliminating Spurious Charge-Transfer States in Time-Dependent Density Functional Theory via Diabatization, with Application to Projection-Based Embedding

For many types of vertical excitation energies, linear-response time-dependent density functional theory (LR-TDDFT) offers a useful degree of accuracy combined with unrivaled computational efficiency, although charge-transfer excitation energies are often systematically and dramatically underestimated, especially for large systems and those that contain explicit solvent. As a result, low-energy electronic spectra of solution-phase chromophores often contain tens to hundreds of spurious charge-transfer states, making LR-TDDFT needlessly expensive in bulk solution. Intensity borrowing by these spurious states can affect intensities of the valence excitations, altering electronic bandshapes. At higher excitation energies, it is difficult to distinguish spurious charge-transfer states from genuine charge-transfer-to-solvent (CTTS) excitations. In this work, we introduce an automated diabatization that enables fast and effective screening of the CTTS acceptor space in bulk solution. Our procedure introduces "natural charge-transfer orbitals" that provide a means to isolate orbitals that are most likely to participate in a CTTS excitation. Projection of these orbitals onto solvent-centered virtual orbitals provides a criterion for defining the most important solvent molecules in a given excitation and be used as an automated subspace selection algorithm for projection-based embedding of a high-level description of the CTTS state in a lower-level description of its environment. We apply this method to an ab initio molecular dynamics trajectory of I^-(aq) and report the lowest-energy CTTS band in the absorption spectrum. Our results are in excellent agreement with the experiment, and only one-third of the water molecules in the I^-(H₂O)₉₆ simulation cell need to be described with LR-TDDFT to obtain excitation energies that are converged to <0.1 eV. The tools introduced herein will improve the accuracy, efficiency, and usability of LR-TDDFT in solution-phase environments.

Effective Negative Diffusion of Singlet Excitons in Organic Semiconductors

Using diffraction-limited ultrafast imaging techniques, we investigate the propagation of singlet and triplet excitons in single-crystal tetracene. Instead of an expected broadening, the distribution of singlet excitons narrows on a nanosecond time scale after photoexcitation. This narrowing results in an effective negative diffusion in which singlet excitons migrate toward the high-density region, eventually leading to a singlet exciton distribution that is smaller than the laser excitation spot. Modeling the excited-state dynamics demonstrates that the origin of the anomalous diffusion is rooted in nonlinear triplet-triplet annihilation (TTA). We anticipate that this is a general phenomenon that can be used to study exciton diffusion and nonlinear TTA rates in semiconductors relevant for organic optoelectronics.

Impact of π-Conjugated Linkers on the Effective Exciton Binding Energy of Diketopyrrolopyrrole-Dithienopyrrole Copolymers

The effect of the nature of the π-conjugated linker that is positioned between electron-deficient 2,5-dihydropyrrolo[3,4-c]pyrrole-1,4-dione (DPP) and electron-rich dithieno[3,2-b:2',3'-d]pyrrole (DTP) units in alternating DPP-DTP copolymers on the optical and electrochemical band gaps and the effective exciton binding energy is investigated for six different aromatic linkers. The optical band gap is related to the electron-donating properties of DTP and the electron-withdrawing properties of DPP but likewise strongly affected by the nature of the linker and varies between 1.13 and 1.80 eV for the six different linkers. The lowest optical band gaps are found for linkers that either raise the highest occupied molecular orbital or lower the lowest unoccupied molecular orbital most, while the highest optical band gap is found for phenyl linkers that have neither strong donating nor strong accepting properties. Along with the optical band gap, the electrochemical band gap also changes, but to a lesser extent from 1.46 to 1.89 eV. The effective exciton binding energy (E b), defined as the difference between the electrochemical and optical band gaps, decreases with an increasing band gap and reaches a minimum of 0.09 eV for the copolymer with the highest band gap, that is, with phenyl linkers. The reduction in E b with an increasing band gap is tentatively explained by a reduced electronic interaction between the DTP and DPP units when the HOMO localizes on DTP and the LUMO localizes on DPP. Support for this explanation is found in the molar absorption coefficient of the copolymers, which shows an overall decreasing trend with decreasing E b.

Visible-Light-Driven Triplet Sensitization of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Using Thionated Perinones

Metal-free chromophores that efficiently generate triplet excited states represent promising alternatives with respect to transition metal-containing photosensitizers, such as those featuring metal-to-ligand charge transfer excited states. However, such molecular constructs have remained underexplored due to the unclear relationship(s) between molecular structure and efficient/rapid intersystem crossing. In this regard, we present a series of three thionated perinone chromophores serving as a newly conceived class of heavy metal-free triplet photosensitizers. We demonstrate that thionation of the lone C═O substituent in each highly fluorescent perinone imparts red-shifted absorbance bands that maintain intense extinction coefficients across the visible spectrum, as well as unusually efficient triplet excited state formation as inferred from the measured singlet O₂ quantum yields at 1270 nm (Φ_Δ = 0.78-1.0). Electronic structure calculations revealed the emergence of a low energy S₁ (n → π*) excited state in the proximity of a slightly higher energy S₂ (π → π*) excited state. The distinct character in each of the two lowest-lying singlet state manifolds resulted in the energetic inversion of the corresponding triplet excited states due to differences in electron exchange interactions. Rapid S₁ → T₁ intersystem crossing was thereby facilitated in this manner through spin-orbit coupling as predicted by the El Sayed rules. The lifetimes of the resultant triplet excited states persisted into the microsecond time regime, as measured by transient absorbance spectroscopy, enabling effective bimolecular triplet sensitization of some common polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The synthetically facile interchange of a single O atom to an S atom in the investigated perinones resulted in marked changes to their photophysical properties, namely, conversion of dominant singlet state fluorescence in the former to long-lived triplet excited states in the latter. The combined results suggest a general strategy for accessing long-lived triplet excited states in organic chromophores featuring a lone C═O moiety residing within its structure, valuable for the design of metal-free triplet photosensitizers.