Paper

Matrix-free hyperfluorescence

Felix

Hyperfluorescence is an emerging technique for generating highly efficient OLEDs by combining a triplet harvester with a bright emitter molecule. Current devices are overly complex due to the number of components involved hampering practical application. A new paper, led by Hugo Bronstein from the University of Cambridge presents an important step toward solving this problem. The idea is to encapsulate the emitter, thus, avoiding the need for a high-gap matrix. The approach is presented in the paper Suppression of Dexter transfer by covalent encapsulation for efficient matrix-free narrowband deep blue hyperfluorescent OLEDs, which just appeared in Nature Materials.

Ionic states

Felix

Our new paper Quantification of the Ionic Character of Multiconfigurational Wave Functions: The Qat Diagnostic just appeared in the Journal of Physical Chemistry A.

The paper deals with the fact that the widely used CASSCF method, if not used carefully, can yield large errors (1-2 eV) in vertical excitation energies. This problem arises for ionic states, as defined within valence bond theory. Within this work we developed a simple diagnostic to identify ionic states. We found a good correlation between the new diagnostic (Qta) and the error, as shown in the figure above.

We hope that the new diagnostic will be useful similar to analogous diagnostics identifying charge transfer states in TDDFT computations. This will give users the possibility to spot potential problems quickly.

On-going work is concerned with going from just diagnosing the problem to developing a numerical correction term to fix the problem.

HOMO/LUMO transitions

Felix

We just posted a preprint discussing a question I have been wondering about for a while: Why is the lowest excited state of a molecule not always the HOMO/LUMO transition? More generally we show how singlet and triplet state energies are affected in different ways by post-MO energy terms.

The preprint can be found here: Excited-state energy component analysis for molecules – Why the lowest excited state is not always the HOMO-LUMO transition

Update: the final published version is available here.

Classification and Analysis of Excited States

Felix

A new book chapter by Patrick and Felix just appeared online: “Classification and Analysis of Molecular Excited States“. Ultimately, this chapter will be part of the Comprehensive Computational Chemistry series published by Elsevier.

In this chapter we explore the various ways in which excited states are classified, that is, according to

  • the molecular orbitals involved,
  • valence bond resonance structures,
  • spatial and spin symmetry,
  • more fundamental wavefunction properties (double excitations, correlation, etc),
  • excited-state aromaticity, and
  • delocalisation and charge transfer.

The map below shows the different classes and highlights the multitude of ways that are used to discuss excited states in the literature.

It is the purpose of this chapter to discuss all these types of states, covering the mathematical and physical background as well as the consequences to spectroscopy and photochemistry.

Doubly excited states

Felix

Our new paper “Classification of Doubly Excited Molecular Electronic States” just appeared in Chemical Science.

The topic of doubly excited states has been discussed quite controversially in the literature over the last couple of years, see for example JACS, 139, 13770 (2017) and JCTC 14, 9 (2018), and it is often disputed whether to classify a state as doubly excited at all. To contribute to this discussion we worked on the development of a physically motivated definition of doubly excited character based on operator expectation values and density matrices, which works independently of the underlying orbital representation. We hope that this approach will provide new understanding on these issues.

Non-Kasha fluorescence

Felix

Kasha’s rule states that fluorescence generally occurs from the lowest excited singlet state (S1). Exceptions to this rule are usually associated with a metastable S2 state that is separated from S1 not allowing for interconversion. In a recent article we outlined a different mechanism for non-Kasha fluorescence: If S1 and S2 are very close in energy, then S2 is populated in a dynamic equilibrium following Boltzmann statistics. This effect is particularly pronounced if there is a large amount of vibrational excess energy following excitation into a high-energy absorption peak. The full story, “Non-Kasha fluorescence of pyrene emerges from a dynamic equilibrium between excited states” was just published in J. Chem. Phys.