Time-dependent density functional study of the electronic potential energy curves and excitation spectrum of the oxygen molecule

Guest-Regulated Generation of Reactive Oxygen Species from Porphyrin-Based Multicomponent Metallacages for Selective Photocatalysis

The development of novel materials for highly efficient and selective photocatalysis is crucial for their practical applications. Herein, we employ the host-guest chemistry of porphyrin-based metallacages to regulate the generation of reactive oxygen species and further use them for the selective photocatalytic oxidation of benzyl alcohols. Upon irradiation, the sole metallacage (6) can generate singlet oxygen (1O2) effectively via excited energy transfer, while its complex with C70 (6⊃C70) opens a pathway for electron transfer to promote the formation of superoxide anion (O2⋅-), producing both 1O2 and O2⋅-. The addition of 4,4'-bipyridine (BPY) to complex 6⊃C70 forms a more stable complex (6⊃BPY) via the coordination of the Zn-porphyrin faces of 6 and BPY, which drives fullerenes out of the cavities and restores the ability of 1O2 generation. Therefore, benzyl alcohols are oxidized into benzyl aldehydes upon irradiation in the presence of 6 or 6⊃BPY, while they are oxidized into benzoic acids when 6⊃C70 is employed as the photosensitizing agent. This study demonstrates a highly efficient strategy that utilizes the host-guest chemistry of metallacages to regulate the generation of reactive oxygen species for selective photooxidation reactions, which could promote the utilization of metallacages and their related host-guest complexes for photocatalytic applications.

Accurate calculations on the 22 electronic states and 54 spin-orbit states of the O2 molecule: potential energy curves, spectroscopic parameters and spin-orbit coupling

The potential energy curves (PECs) of 54 spin-orbit states generated from the 22 electronic states of O2 molecule are investigated for the first time for internuclear separations from about 0.1 to 1.0nm. Of the 22 electronic states, the X(3)Σg(-), A(')(3)Δu, A(3)Σu(+), B(3)Σu(-), C(3)Πg, a(1)Δg, b(1)Σg(+), c(1)Σu(-), d(1)Πg, f(1)Σu(+), 1(5)Πg, 1(3)Πu, 2(3)Σg(-), 1(5)Σu(-), 2(1)Σu(-) and 2(1)Δg are found to be bound, whereas the 1(5)Σg(+), 2(5)Σg(+), 1(1)Πu, 1(5)Δg, 1(5)Πu and 2(1)Πu are found to be repulsive ones. The B(3)Σu(-) and d(1)Πg states possess the double well. And the 1(3)Πu, C(3)Πg, A'(3)Δu, 1(5)Δg and 2(5)Σg(+) states are the inverted ones when the spin-orbit coupling is included. The PEC calculations are done by the complete active space self-consistent field (CASSCF) method, which is followed by the internally contracted multireference configuration interaction (icMRCI) approach with the Davidson correction. Core-valence correlation and scalar relativistic corrections are taken into account. The convergence of present calculations is evaluated with respect to the basis set and level of theory. The vibrational properties are discussed for the 1(5)Πg, 1(3)Πu, d(1)Πg and 1(5)Σu(-) states and for the second well of the B(3)Σu(-) state. The spin-orbit coupling effect is accounted for by the state interaction method with the Breit-Pauli Hamiltonian. The PECs of all the electronic states and spin-orbit states are extrapolated to the complete basis set limit. The spectroscopic parameters are obtained, and compared with available experimental and other theoretical results. Analyses demonstrate that the spectroscopic parameters reported here can be expected to be reliably predicted ones. The conclusion is obtained that the effect of spin-orbit coupling on the spectroscopic parameters are small almost for all the electronic states involved in this paper except for the 1(5)Σu(-), 1(5)Πg and 1(3)Πu.

Progress in time-dependent density-functional theory

The classic density-functional theory (DFT) formalism introduced by Hohenberg, Kohn, and Sham in the mid-1960s is based on the idea that the complicated N-electron wave function can be replaced with the mathematically simpler 1-electron charge density in electronic structure calculations of the ground stationary state. As such, ordinary DFT cannot treat time-dependent (TD) problems nor describe excited electronic states. In 1984, Runge and Gross proved a theorem making TD-DFT formally exact. Information about electronic excited states may be obtained from this theory through the linear response (LR) theory formalism. Beginning in the mid-1990s, LR-TD-DFT became increasingly popular for calculating absorption and other spectra of medium- and large-sized molecules. Its ease of use and relatively good accuracy has now brought LR-TD-DFT to the forefront for this type of application. As the number and the diversity of applications of TD-DFT have grown, so too has our understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the approximate functionals commonly used for TD-DFT. The objective of this article is to continue where a previous review of TD-DFT in Volume 55 of the Annual Review of Physical Chemistry left off and highlight some of the problems and solutions from the point of view of applied physical chemistry. Because doubly-excited states have a particularly important role to play in bond dissociation and formation in both thermal and photochemistry, particular emphasis is placed on the problem of going beyond or around the TD-DFT adiabatic approximation, which limits TD-DFT calculations to nominally singly-excited states.

Static and dynamic second hyperpolarizability calculated by time-dependent density functional cubic response theory with local contribution and natural bond orbital analysis

The static and dynamic second hyperpolarizability gamma has been investigated by time-dependent density functional cubic response theory. The third-order coupled perturbed Kohn-Sham equations were solved to obtain the third-order perturbed charge density. Calculations on a number of small molecules (N(2), CO(2), C(2)H(4), CO, HF, H(2)O, and CH(4)), paradisubstituted oligoacetylene chains, benzene, and eight paradisubstituted benzenes were performed to verify the implementation and to assess the accuracy of the nonhybrid and hybrid time-dependent density functional theory computations. Nitroaniline and a derivative were taken as examples to investigate the distribution of the "gamma density" and to demonstrate the feasibility of analyzing cubic response functions in terms of contributions from natural bond orbitals (NBOs) and natural localized molecular orbitals (NLMOs). The results highlight the contributions from atoms and bonds on different functional groups to the total value of gamma based on the NBO/NLMO analysis, which might be helpful for new nonlinear optical materials design.

Singlet-triplet gaps in large multireference systems: Spin-flip-driven alternatives for bioinorganic modeling

The proper description of low-spin states of open-shell systems, which are commonly encountered in the field of bioinorganic chemistry, rigorously requires using multireference ab initio methodologies. Such approaches are unfortunately very CPU-time consuming as dynamic correlation effects also have to be taken into account. The broken-symmetry unrestricted (spin-polarized) density functional theory (DFT) technique has been widely employed up to now to bypass that drawback, but despite a number of relative successes in the determination of singlet-triplet gaps, this framework cannot be considered as entirely satisfactory. In this contribution, we investigate some alternative ways relying on the spin-flip time-dependent DFT approach [Y. Shao et al. J. Chem. Phys. 118, 4807 (2003)]. Taking a few well-documented copper-dioxygen adducts as examples, we show that spin-flip (SF)-DFT computed singlet-triplet gaps compare very favorably to either experimental results or large-scale CASMP2 computations. Moreover, it is shown that this approach can be used to optimize geometries at a DFT level including some multireference effects. Finally, a clear-cut added value of the SF-DFT computations is drawn: if pure ab initio data are required, then the electronic excitations revealed by SF-DFT can be considered in designing dramatically reduced zeroth-order variational spaces to be used in subsequent multireference configuration interaction or multireference perturbation treatments.