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Updated: Jun 30, 2025
Excitonic Hamiltonians for Calculating Optical Absorption Spectra and Optoelectronic Properties of Molecular Aggregates and Solids
Published on: May 27, 2020
Performance of Density Functionals for Excited-State Properties of Isolated Chromophores and Exciplexes: Emission
Abhilash Patra1, George Baffour Pipim2, Anna I Krylov2
1Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089, United States.
Abstract:
This study assesses the performance of various meta-generalized gradient approximation (meta-GGA), global hybrid, and range-separated hybrid (RSH) density functionals in capturing the excited-state properties of organic chromophores and their excited-state complexes (exciplexes). Motivated by their uses in solar energy harvesting and photoredox CO2 reduction, we use oligo-(p-phenylenes) and their excited-state complexes with triethylamine as model systems. We focus on the fluorescence properties of these systems, specifically emission energies. We also consider solvatochromic shifts and wave function characteristics. The latter is described by using reduced quantities such as natural transition orbitals (NTOs) and exciton descriptors. The functionals are benchmarked against the experimental fluorescence spectra and the equation-of-motion coupled-cluster method with single and double excitations. Both in isolated chromophores and in exciplexes, meta-GGA functionals drastically underestimate the emission energies and exhibit significant exciton delocalization and anticorrelation between electron and hole motion. The performance of global hybrid functionals is strongly dependent on the percentage of exact exchange. Our study identifies RSH GGAs as the best-performing functionals, with ωPBE demonstrating the best agreement with experimental results. RSH meta-GGAs often overestimate emission energies in exciplexes and yield larger hole NTOs. Their performance can be improved by optimally tuning the range-separation parameter.
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