Substituent and Solvent Effects on the Photoisomerization of Cinnamate Derivatives: An XMS-CASPT2 Study

Cinnamate derivatives show a variety of photo-induced reactions. Among them is trans-cis photoisomerization, which may involve the nonradiative decay (NRD) process. The extended multistate complete active space second-order perturbation (XMS-CASPT2) method was used in this study as a suitable theory for treating multireference electronic nature, which was frequently manifested in the photoisomerization process. The minimum energy paths of the trans-cis photoisomerization process of cinnamate derivatives were determined, and the activation energies were estimated using the resulting intrinsic reaction coordinate (IRC) paths. Natural orbital analysis revealed that the transition state's (TS) electronic structure is zwitterionic-like, elucidating the solvent and substituent effect on the energy barrier of photoisomerization paths. Furthermore, it was found that the charge on the pyramidalized carbon atom at the TS structure was strongly correlated with the activation energy barrier for the cinnamate derivatives. Thus, it seemingly provided a physical picture of the photoisomerization of cinnamates and was a good descriptor potentially applicable to molecular design for controlling the rate constant of the photoisomerization reaction.