Determination of Ground-State Hole-Transfer Rates Between Equivalent Sites in Oxidized Multiporphyrin Arrays Using Time-Resolved Optical Spectroscopy

Electronic Absorption Spectra of Tetrapyrrole-Based Pigments via TD-DFT: A Reduced Orbital Space Study

Tetrapyrrole-based pigments play a crucial role in photosynthesis as principal light absorbers in light-harvesting chemical systems. As such, accurate theoretical descriptions of the electronic absorption spectra of these pigments will aid in the proper description and understanding of the overall photophysics of photosynthesis. In this work, time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) at the CAM-B3LYP/6-31G* level of theory is employed to produce the theoretical absorption spectra of several tetrapyrrole-based pigments. However, the application of TD-DFT to large systems with several hundreds of atoms can become computationally prohibitive. Therefore, in this study, TD-DFT calculations with reduced orbital spaces (ROSs) that exclude portions of occupied and virtual orbitals are pursued as a viable, computationally cost-effective alternative to conventional TD-DFT calculations. The effects of reducing orbital space size on theoretical spectra are qualitatively and quantitatively described, and both conventional and ROS results are benchmarked against experimental absorption spectra of various tetrapyrrole-based pigments. The orbital reduction approach is also applied to a large natural pigment assembly that comprises the principal light-absorbing component of the reaction center in purple bacteria. Overall, we find that TD-DFT calculations with proper and judicious orbital space reductions can adequately reproduce conventional, full orbital space, TD-DFT results of all pigments studied in this work.

Probing the rate of hole transfer in oxidized synthetic chlorin dyads via site-specific (13)C-labeling

Understanding electronic communication among interacting constituents of multicomponent molecular architectures is important for rational design in diverse fields including artificial photosynthesis and molecular electronics. One strategy for examining ground-state hole/electron transfer in an oxidized tetrapyrrolic array relies on analysis of the hyperfine interactions observed in the EPR spectrum of the pi-cation radical. This strategy has been previously employed to probe the hole/electron-transfer process in oxidized multiporphyrin arrays of normal isotopic composition, wherein (1)H and (14)N serve as the hyperfine "clocks", and in arrays containing site-specific (13)C-labels, which serve as additional hyperfine clocks. Herein, the hyperfine-clock strategy is applied to dyads of dihydroporphyrins (chlorins). Chlorins are more closely related structurally to chlorophylls than are porphyrins. A de novo synthetic strategy has been employed to introduce a (13)C label at the 19-position of the chlorin macrocycle, which is a site of large electron/hole density and is accessible synthetically beginning with (13)C-nitromethane. The resulting singly (13)C-labeled chlorin was coupled with an unlabeled chlorin to give a dyad wherein a diphenylethyne linker spans the 10-positions of the two zinc chlorins. EPR studies of the monocations of both the natural abundance and (13)C-labeled zinc chlorin dyads and benchmark zinc chlorin monomers reveal that the time scale for hole/electron transfer is in the 4-7 ns range, which is 5-10-fold longer than that in analogous porphyrin arrays. The slower hole/electron transfer rate observed for the chlorin versus porphyrin dyads is attributed to the fact that the HOMO is a(1u)-like for the chlorins versus a(2u)-like for the porphyrins; the a(1u)-like orbital exhibits little (or no) electron/hole density at the site of linker attachment whereas the a(2u)-like orbital exhibits significant electron/hole density at this site. Collectively, the studies of the chlorin and porphyrin dyads provide insights into the structural features that influence the hole/electron-transfer process.

Excited state structural dynamics of tetra(4-aminophenyl)porphine in the condensed phase: resonance Raman spectroscopy and density functional theory calculation study

Resonance Raman spectra (RRs) of tetra(4-aminophenyl) porphine (TAPP) were obtained, and density functional calculations were done to help the elucidation of the photorelaxation dynamics of Soret (B(x) and B(y) band) and Q(y) electronic transitions. The RRs indicate that the photorelaxation dynamics for the S(0) --> S(3) excited electronic state is predominantly along the totally symmetric porphin ring C(beta)=C(beta) + C(m)C(alpha) stretch, C(m)-ph stretch, and simultaneously along the asymmetric nu(C(m)C(alpha))(as) and nu(C(alpha)C(beta))(as) relaxation processes leading to Q(y) while that for S(0) --> S(2) is predominantly along the porphin ring C(beta)=C(beta) + C(m)C(alpha) stretch and simultaneously along the asymmetric nu(C(m)C(alpha))(as) + nu(C(alpha)C(beta))(as) relaxation processes leading to thermal equilibrium in Q(x). The excited state structural dynamics of TAPP determined from RRs shows that internal conversion B(x) --> Q(y) electronic relaxation occurs in tens of femtoseconds and the short-time dynamics were first interpreted with account of the time-dependent wave packet theory and Herzberg-Teller contributions.