Perturbed ground state method for electron transfer

Extended Mulliken-Hush Method with Applications to the Theoretical Study of Electron Transfer

A novel adiabatic-to-diabatic (ATD) transformation strategy, namely, the extended Mulliken-Hush (XMH) method, is proposed to evaluate diabatic properties including electronic couplings, potential energy surfaces, and their crossings. The XMH method is developed by adopting our recently proposed ATD transformation formula of a general vectorial physical observable, in which a useful ATD transformation is further determined by using an auxiliary dipole between localized frontier orbitals as a simple approximation of the diabatic transition dipole. The XMH method is simple and practical that provides a flexible way to construct diabatic states. To some extent, it can be regarded as an extension of the generalized Mulliken-Hush (GMH) method since the latter takes a stronger approximation, in which the diabatic transition dipole is assumed to be vanishing. Test calculations on the HeH₂⁺ system show that the electronic couplings predicted by the XMH method are closer to the ones calculated by the valence bond block-diagonalization approach than the GMH ones since the XMH method takes into account both the magnitude and direction of the diabatic transition dipole, which is consistent with the properties of this molecule. In the study of electron transfer in the two kinds of donor-bridge-acceptor systems, the XMH method maintains the simplicity of the GMH method and gives reasonable results even when the latter fails, wherein the diabatic transition dipole is nearly perpendicular to the difference of the initial and final adiabatic dipoles. More importantly, the XMH method can be easily combined with high-level electronic structure methods, in which the properties of the ground and excited states may be more accurately calculated, and hence, one may expect that further development of the XMH method would result in a general computational model for studying electron transfer reactions.

Multistate Density Functional Theory for Effective Diabatic Electronic Coupling

Multistate density functional theory (MSDFT) is presented to estimate the effective transfer integral associated with electron and hole transfer reactions. In this approach, the charge-localized diabatic states are defined by block localization of Kohn-Sham orbitals, which constrain the electron density for each diabatic state in orbital space. This differs from the procedure used in constrained density functional theory that partitions the density within specific spatial regions. For a series of model systems, the computed transfer integrals are consistent with experimental data and show the expected exponential attenuation with the donor-acceptor separation. The present method can be used to model charge transfer reactions including processes involving coupled electron and proton transfer.

Theoretical calculation of reorganization energy for electron self-exchange reaction by constrained density functional theory and constrained equilibrium thermodynamics

Within the framework of constrained density functional theory (CDFT), the diabatic or charge localized states of electron transfer (ET) have been constructed. Based on the diabatic states, inner reorganization energy λin has been directly calculated. For solvent reorganization energy λs, a novel and reasonable nonequilibrium solvation model is established by introducing a constrained equilibrium manipulation, and a new expression of λs has been formulated. It is found that λs is actually the cost of maintaining the residual polarization, which equilibrates with the extra electric field. On the basis of diabatic states constructed by CDFT, a numerical algorithm using the new formulations with the dielectric polarizable continuum model (D-PCM) has been implemented. As typical test cases, self-exchange ET reactions between tetracyanoethylene (TCNE) and tetrathiafulvalene (TTF) and their corresponding ionic radicals in acetonitrile are investigated. The calculated reorganization energies λ are 7293 cm(-1) for TCNE/TCNE(-) and 5939 cm(-1) for TTF/TTF(+) reactions, agreeing well with available experimental results of 7250 cm(-1) and 5810 cm(-1), respectively.

Orthogonality constrained density functional theory for electronic excited states

We report a novel scheme for computing electronic excitation energies within the framework of density functional theory (DFT) based on a time-independent variational formulation of DFT. The excited state density functional is recast as a Kohn-Sham functional, which is further simplified by an adiabatic approximation of the exchange-correlation functional. Under the adiabatic approximation, the minimization of the excited state Kohn-Sham functional is shown to be equivalent to a ground state DFT computation augmented with orthogonality constraints with respect to the ground state Kohn-Sham determinant. An algorithm for the optimization of the energy subject to orthogonality constraints, which does not suffer from variational collapse, is described and implemented. A benchmark test set containing 28 organic molecules (Schreiber, M. J. Chem. Phys. 2008, 128, 134110) was used to assess the quality of the excitation energies obtained. Two novel approaches to spin-adapt the resulting excitation energies are discussed and found to provide results with error metrics similar to those of time-dependent DFT. Similarities and differences with respect to other time-independent DFT approaches are highlighted and some of the advantages of our scheme-including the ability to correctly describe charge-transfer excitations-are critically assessed.

ELECTRON TRANSFER INDUCED DISSOCIATION OF CHLORO-CYANO-BENZENE RADICAL ANION: DRIVING CHEMICAL REACTIONS VIA CHARGE RESTRAINTS

We introduce a new quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics based method to drive electron transfer reactions. Our approach uses the dynamically restrained electrostatic potential derived charges of the quantum atoms1 as a reaction coordinate, and allows an estimation of the free energy barrier of the electron transfer process. Moreover, it provides an accurate description of the electronic structure changes and of the nuclear reorganization associated with the reaction. We use the method to describe the electron-transfer induced dissociation of the m-chloro-cyano-benzene radical anion in aqueous solution. The reaction is triggered by solvent reorganization by a change in the coordination water shell around the cyano nitrogen atom. At the onset of the reaction, charge-spin segregation is observed. The negative charge is transferred to the leaving Cl , while the spin density localizes on the non-saturated carbon atom of the benzene ring. The calculated free energy barrier of dissociation is in good quantitative agreement with the experimental data.

Nonorthogonality Problem and Effective Electronic Coupling Calculation: Application to Charge Transfer in π-Stacks Relevant to Biochemistry and Molecular Electronics

A recently proposed method for the calculation of the effective electronic coupling (or charge-transfer integral) in a two-state system is discussed and related to other methods in the literature. The theoretical expression of the coupling is exact within the two-state model and applies to the general case where the charge transfer (CT) process involves nonorthogonal initial and final diabatic (localized) states. In this work, it is shown how this effective electronic coupling is also the one to be used in a suitable extension of Rabi's formula to the nonorthogonal representation of two-state dynamical problems. The formula for the transfer integral is inspected in the regime of long-range CT and applied to CT reactions in redox molecular systems of interest to biochemistry and/or to molecular electronics: the guanine-thymine stack from regular B-DNA, the polyaromatic perylenediimide stack, and the quinol-semiquinone couple. The calculations are performed within the framework of the Density Functional Theory (DFT), using hybrid exchange-correlation (XC) density functionals, which also allowed investigation of the appropriateness of such hybrid-DFT methods for computing electronic couplings. The use of the recently developed M06-2X and M06-HF density functionals in appropriate ways is supported by the results of this work.

Full-electron calculation of effective electronic couplings and excitation energies of charge transfer states: Application to hole transfer in DNA pi-stacks

In this work I develop and apply a theoretical method for calculating effective electronic couplings (or transfer integrals) between redox sites involved in hole or electron transfer reactions. The resulting methodology is a refinement and a generalization of a recently developed approach for transfer integral evaluation. In fact, it holds for any overlap between the charge-localized states used to represent charge transfer (CT) processes in the two-state model. The presented theoretical and computational analyses show that the prototype approach is recovered for sufficiently small overlaps. The method does not involve any empirical parameter. It allows a complete multielectron description, therefore including electronic relaxation effects. Furthermore, its theoretical formulation holds at any value of the given reaction coordinate and yields a formula for the evaluation of the vertical excitation energy (i.e., the energy difference between the adiabatic ground and first-excited electronic states) that rests on the same physical quantities used in transfer integral calculation. In this paper the theoretical approach is applied to CT in B-DNA base dimers within the framework of Density Functional Theory (DFT), although it can be implemented in other computational schemes. The results of this work, as compared with previous Hartree-Fock (HF) and post-HF evaluations, support the applicability of the current implementation of the method to larger pi-stacked arrays, where post-HF approaches are computationally unfeasible.

Block-Localized Density Functional Theory (BLDFT), Diabatic Coupling, and Their Use in Valence Bond Theory for Representing Reactive Potential Energy Surfaces

A multistate density functional theory in the framework of the valence bond model is described. The method is based on a block-localized density functional theory (BLDFT) for the construction of valence-bond-like diabatic electronic states and is suitable for the study of electron transfer reactions and for the representation of reactive potential energy surfaces. The method is equivalent to a valence bond theory with the treatment of the localized configurations by using density functional theory (VBDFT). In VBDFT, the electron densities and energies of the valence bond states are determined by BLDFT. A functional estimate of the off-diagonal matrix elements of the VB Hamiltonian is proposed, making use of the overlap integral between Kohn-Sham determinants and the exchange-correlation functional for the ground state substituted with the transition (exchange) density. In addition, we describe an approximate approach, in which the off-diagonal matrix element is computed by wave function theory using block-localized Kohn-Sham orbitals. The key feature is that the electron density of the adiabatic ground state is not directly computed nor used to obtain the ground-state energy; the energy is determined by diagonalization of the multistate valence bond Hamiltonian. This represents a departure from the standard single-determinant Kohn-Sham density functional theory. The multistate VBDFT method is illustrated by the bond dissociation of H2+ and a set of three nucleophilic substitution reactions in the DBH24 database. In the dissociation of H2+, the VBDFT method yields the correct asymptotic behavior as the two protons stretch to infinity, whereas approximate functionals fail badly. For the S(N)2 nucleophilic substitution reactions, the hybrid functional B3LYP severely underestimates the barrier heights, while the approximate two-state VBDFT method overcomes the self-interaction error, and overestimates the barrier heights. Inclusion of the ionic state in a three-state model, VBDFT(3), significantly improves the computed barrier heights, which are found to be in accord with accurate results. The BLDFT method is a versatile theory that can be used to analyze conventional DFT results to gain insight into chemical bonding properties, and it is illustrated by examining the intricate energy contributions to the ion-dipole complex stabilization.

Dynamics of charge transfer: rate processes formulated with nonequilibrium Green's functions

The authors examine the connection between electron transport under bias in a junction and nonadiabatic intramolecular electron transfer (ET). It is shown that under certain assumptions it is possible to define a stationary current that allows the computation of the intramolecular transfer rate using the same formalism that is employed in the description of transport. They show that the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism of quantum transport can be used to calculate the ET rate. The formal connection between electron transport and electron transfer is made, and they work out the simple case of an electronic level coupled to a vibrational mode representing a thermal bath and show that the result is the same as expected from a Fermi golden rule treatment, and in the high-temperature limit yields the Marcus electron transfer theory. The usefulness of this alternative formulation of rates is discussed.

Extracting electron transfer coupling elements from constrained density functional theory

Constrained density functional theory (DFT) is a useful tool for studying electron transfer (ET) reactions. It can straightforwardly construct the charge-localized diabatic states and give a direct measure of the inner-sphere reorganization energy. In this work, a method is presented for calculating the electronic coupling matrix element (Hab) based on constrained DFT. This method completely avoids the use of ground-state DFT energies because they are known to irrationally predict fractional electron transfer in many cases. Instead it makes use of the constrained DFT energies and the Kohn-Sham wave functions for the diabatic states in a careful way. Test calculations on the Zn2+ and the benzene-Cl atom systems show that the new prescription yields reasonable agreement with the standard generalized Mulliken-Hush method. We then proceed to produce the diabatic and adiabatic potential energy curves along the reaction pathway for intervalence ET in the tetrathiafulvalene-diquinone (Q-TTF-Q) anion. While the unconstrained DFT curve has no reaction barrier and gives Hab approximately 17 kcal/mol, which qualitatively disagrees with experimental results, the Hab calculated from constrained DFT is about 3 kcalmol and the generated ground state has a barrier height of 1.70 kcal/mol, successfully predicting (Q-TTF-Q)- to be a class II mixed-valence compound.

Evaluation of Nonlinear Quantum Time Correlation Functions within the Centroid Dynamics Formulation

A method to evaluate nonlinear centroid correlation functions is presented that is amenable to simple numerical computation. It can be implemented with the centroid molecular dynamics method for approximate quantum dynamics with no additional assumptions. Two nonlinear correlation functions are evaluated for a model potential using this scheme and compared with results from exact quantum calculations.

First-principles density-functional theory calculations of electron-transfer rates in azurin dimers

We have conceived and implemented a new method to calculate transfer integrals between molecular sites, which exploits few quantities derived from density-functional theory electronic structure computations and does not require the knowledge of the exact transition state coordinate. The method uses a complete multielectron scheme, thus including electronic relaxation effects. Moreover, it makes no use of empirical parameters. The computed electronic couplings can then be combined with estimates of the reorganization energy to evaluate electron-transfer rates that are measured in kinetic experiments: the latter are the basis to interpret electron-transfer mechanisms. We have applied our approach to the study of the electron self-exchange reaction of azurin, an electron-transfer protein belonging to the family of cupredoxins. The transfer integral estimates provided by the proposed method have been compared with those resulting from other computational techniques, from empirical models, and with available experimental data.