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Updated: Jun 5, 2026

Excitonic Hamiltonians for Calculating Optical Absorption Spectra and Optoelectronic Properties of Molecular Aggregates and Solids
Published on: May 27, 2020
Excitation energy calculation of conjugated hydrocarbons: a new Pariser-Parr-Pople model parameterization approaching
Dawei Zhang1, Zexing Qu, Chungen Liu
1Institute of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Mesoscopic Chemistry of the Ministry of Education, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
Abstract:
A new parameterization for the Pariser-Parr-Pople (PPP) model for conjugated hydrocarbons is proposed in this work. The distance-dependence of PPP parameters are obtained from CASPT2 ground state and low-lying excited state energies of ethylene and its cation at various C-C single bond lengths and are fitted to a set of carefully chosen mathematical functions. Our new PPP model is applied to the calculation of vertical singlet-triplet energy gaps and the excitation energies for low-lying π→π(*) valence excitations in various π-conjugated molecules. Results with the new PPP model are consistently better than the standard PPP model in use. It often surpasses density functional theory and single-reference excited state methods such as configuration interaction singles or time-dependent density functional theory in terms of its accuracy and agrees reasonably well with high-level theories or experiments.
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