The structure and UV spectroscopy of benzene-water (Bz-W6) clusters using time-dependent density functional theory

DFT and MP2 calculations are performed to obtain optimized ground state geometries and binding energies of the cage and the prism conformers of water W6 clusters and Bz-W6 clusters using the aug-cc-pVDZ basis set. The cage conformer of Bz-W6 system is found to be more stable than prism conformer for all range of DFT functionals and MP2. Time dependent-DFT is then used to study UV spectroscopy of Bz, water W6 clusters and Bz-W6 clusters at both the MP2 and wB97XD optimized ground state geometries using the B3LYP, CAM-B3LYP and M06-2X functionals with 6-31++G(d,p) and aug-cc-pVTZ basis sets. Our results predict minor differences in the UV spectroscopy of cage and prism conformers W6 and Bz-W6 clusters that may be observable with high-resolution spectroscopy. The M06-2X and CAM-B3LYP functionals perform consistently with each other. Benzene-mediated excitations of the water W6 cluster towards longer wavelengths above 170 nm are noticed in both the cage and prism geometries of Bz-W6. Benzene is found to be influenced after interacting with the cage and prism W6 geometries, and is seen to undergo a red shift in the main π→π* electronic transition, in which the degeneracy is slightly broken. Charge transfer (CT) states and diffuse Rydberg-type states are also found to play an important role in the spectroscopy of such systems.