TY - JOUR
T1 - High-level theoretical benchmark investigations of the UV-vis absorption spectra of paradigmatic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as models for graphene quantum dots
AU - Shi, Baimei
AU - Nachtigallová, Dana
AU - Aquino, Adélia J.A.
AU - Machado, Francisco B.C.
AU - Lischka, Hans
N1 - Funding Information:
We are grateful for generous support from the School of Pharmaceutical Science and Technology, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China, including computer time on the SPST computer cluster Arran. D.N. acknowledges the support from research project RVO (No. 61388963) of the IOCB of the CAS and of the Czech Science Foundation (Grant No. GA16-16959S). F.B.C.M. gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Brazilian agencies Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) under Project Nos. 307052/2016-8 and 404337/2016-3, Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) under Project No. 2017/07707-3, and Coordenação de Aper-feiçamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) under Project CAPES/PVE Project No. 8881.066022/2014-01. F.B.C.M., A.J.A.A., and H.L. are thankful to the FAPESP/Tianjin University SPRINT program (Project No. 2017/50157-4) for travel support. This work was supported by the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies (Project No. C2013A0070), an Office of Science User Facility operated for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science by Los Alamos National Laboratory (Contract No. DE-AC52-06NA25396) and Sandia National Laboratories (Contract No. DE-AC04-94AL85000). The authors declare no competing financial interest.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Author(s).
PY - 2019/3/28
Y1 - 2019/3/28
N2 - Five paradigmatic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (pyrene, circum-1-pyrene, coronene, circum-1-coronene, and circum-2-coronene) are used for studying the performance of three single-reference methods {scaled opposite-spin-algebraic diagrammatic construction to second-order [SOS-ADC(2)], time-dependent (TD)-B3LYP, and TD-Coulomb-attenuating method (CAM)-B3LYP} and three multireference (MR) methods [density functional theory/multireference configuration interaction (DFT/MRCI), strongly contracted-n-electron valence state perturbation theory to second order (NEVPT2), and spectroscopy oriented configuration interaction (SORCI)]. The performance of these methods was evaluated by comparison of the calculated vertical excitation energies with experiments, where available. DFT/MRCI performs best and thus was used as a benchmark for other approaches where experimental values were not available. Both TD-B3LYP and NEVPT2 agree well with the benchmark data. SORCI performs better for coronene than for pyrene. SOS-ADC(2) does reasonably well in terms of excitation energies for smaller systems, but the error increases somewhat as the size of the system gets bigger. The natural transition orbital analysis for SOS-ADC(2) results indicated that at least two configurations were essential to characterize most of the lower-case electronic states. TD-CAM-B3LYP gives the largest errors for excitation energies and also gives an incorrect order of the lowest two states in circum-1-pyrene. A strong density increase of dark states was observed in the UV spectra with increasing size except for the lowest few states which remained well separated. An extrapolation of the UV spectra to infinite PAH size for S 1 , S 2 , and the first bright state based on the coronene series was made. The extrapolated excitation energies closest to experimental measurements on graphene quantum dots were obtained by TD-CAM-B3LYP.
AB - Five paradigmatic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) (pyrene, circum-1-pyrene, coronene, circum-1-coronene, and circum-2-coronene) are used for studying the performance of three single-reference methods {scaled opposite-spin-algebraic diagrammatic construction to second-order [SOS-ADC(2)], time-dependent (TD)-B3LYP, and TD-Coulomb-attenuating method (CAM)-B3LYP} and three multireference (MR) methods [density functional theory/multireference configuration interaction (DFT/MRCI), strongly contracted-n-electron valence state perturbation theory to second order (NEVPT2), and spectroscopy oriented configuration interaction (SORCI)]. The performance of these methods was evaluated by comparison of the calculated vertical excitation energies with experiments, where available. DFT/MRCI performs best and thus was used as a benchmark for other approaches where experimental values were not available. Both TD-B3LYP and NEVPT2 agree well with the benchmark data. SORCI performs better for coronene than for pyrene. SOS-ADC(2) does reasonably well in terms of excitation energies for smaller systems, but the error increases somewhat as the size of the system gets bigger. The natural transition orbital analysis for SOS-ADC(2) results indicated that at least two configurations were essential to characterize most of the lower-case electronic states. TD-CAM-B3LYP gives the largest errors for excitation energies and also gives an incorrect order of the lowest two states in circum-1-pyrene. A strong density increase of dark states was observed in the UV spectra with increasing size except for the lowest few states which remained well separated. An extrapolation of the UV spectra to infinite PAH size for S 1 , S 2 , and the first bright state based on the coronene series was made. The extrapolated excitation energies closest to experimental measurements on graphene quantum dots were obtained by TD-CAM-B3LYP.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85063431257&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1063/1.5086760
DO - 10.1063/1.5086760
M3 - Article
C2 - 30927896
AN - SCOPUS:85063431257
SN - 0021-9606
VL - 150
JO - The Journal of Chemical Physics
JF - The Journal of Chemical Physics
IS - 12
M1 - 124302
ER -