TY - INPR A1 - Auerhammer, Nina A1 - Schulz, Alexander A1 - Schmiedel, Alexander A1 - Holzapfel, Marco A1 - Hoche, Joscha A1 - Röhr, Merle I. S. A1 - Mitric, Roland A1 - Lambert, Christoph T1 - Dynamic exciton localisation in a pyrene-BODIPY-pyrene dye conjugate T2 - Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics N2 - The photophysics of a molecular triad consisting of a BODIPY dye and two pyrene chromophores attached in 2-position are investigated by steady state and fs-time resolved transient absorption spectroscopy as well as by field induced surface hopping (FISH) simulations. While the steady state measurements indicate moderate chromophore interactions within the triad, the time resolved measurements show upon pyrene excitation a delocalised excited state which localises onto the BODIPY chromophore with a time constant of 0.12 ps. This could either be interpreted as an internal conversion process within the excitonically coupled chromophores or as an energy transfer from the pyrenes to the BODIPY dye. The analysis of FISH-trajectories reveals an oscillatory behaviour where the excitation hops between the pyrene units and the BODIPY dye several times until finally they become localised on the BODIPY chromophore within 100 fs. This is accompanied by an ultrafast nonradiative relaxation within the excitonic manifold mediated by the nonadiabatic coupling. Averaging over an ensemble of trajectories allowed us to simulate the electronic state population dynamics and determine the time constants for the nonradiative transitions that mediate the ultrafast energy transfer and exciton localisation on BODIPY. KW - Exciton localization dynamics Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-198718 UR - https://doi.org/10.1039/C9CP00908F N1 - Accepted manuscript ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoche, Joscha A1 - Flock, Marco A1 - Miao, Xincheng A1 - Philipp, Luca Nils A1 - Wenzel, Michael A1 - Fischer, Ingo A1 - Mitric, Roland T1 - Excimer formation dynamics in the isolated tetracene dimer JF - Chemical Science N2 - The understanding of excimer formation and its interplay with the singlet-correlated triplet pair state \(^{1}\)(TT) is of high significance for the development of efficient organic electronics. Here, we study the photoinduced dynamics of the tetracene dimer in the gas phase by time-resolved photoionisation and photoion imaging experiments as well as nonadiabatic dynamics simulations in order to obtain mechanistic insight into the excimer formation dynamics. The experiments are performed using a picosecond laser system for excitation into the S\(_{2}\) state and reveal a biexponential time dependence. The time constants, obtained as a function of excess energy, lie in the range between ≈10 ps and 100 ps and are assigned to the relaxation of the excimer on the S\(_{1}\) surface and to its deactivation to the ground state. Simulations of the quantum-classical photodynamics are carried out in the frame of the semi-empirical CISD and TD-lc-DFTB methods. Both theoretical approaches reveal a dominating relaxation pathway that is characterised by the formation of a perfectly stacked excimer. TD-lc-DFTB simulations have also uncovered a second relaxation channel into a less stable dimer conformation in the S\(_{1}\) state. Both methods have consistently shown that the electronic and geometric relaxation to the excimer state is completed in less than 10 ps. The inclusion of doubly excited states in the CISD dynamics and their diabatisation further allowed to observe a transient population of the \(^{1}\)(TT) state, which, however, gets depopulated on a timescale of 8 ps, leading finally to the trapping in the excimer minimum. KW - excimer formation KW - tetracene dimer KW - organic electronics Y1 - 2021 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-251559 VL - 12 IS - 36 SP - 11965 EP - 11975 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoche, Joscha A1 - Schmitt, Hans-Christian A1 - Humeniuk, Alexander A1 - Fischer, Ingo A1 - Mitrić, Roland A1 - Röhr, Merle I. S. T1 - The mechanism of excimer formation: an experimental and theoretical study on the pyrene dimer JF - Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics N2 - The understanding of excimer formation in organic materials is of fundamental importance, since excimers profoundly influence their functional performance in applications such as light-harvesting, photovoltaics or organic electronics. We present a joint experimental and theoretical study of the ultrafast dynamics of excimer formation in the pyrene dimer in a supersonic jet, which is the archetype of an excimer forming system. We perform simulations of the nonadiabatic photodynamics in the frame of TDDFT that reveal two distinct excimer formation pathways in the gas-phase dimer. The first pathway involves local excited state relaxation close to the initial Franck–Condon geometry that is characterized by a strong excitation of the stacking coordinate exhibiting damped oscillations with a period of 350 fs that persist for several picoseconds. The second excimer forming pathway involves large amplitude oscillations along the parallel shift coordinate with a period of ≈900 fs that after intramolecular vibrational energy redistribution leads to the formation of a perfectly stacked dimer. The electronic relaxation within the excitonic manifold is mediated by the presence of intermolecular conical intersections formed between fully delocalized excitonic states. Such conical intersections may generally arise in stacked π-conjugated aggregates due to the interplay between the long-range and short-range electronic coupling. The simulations are supported by picosecond photoionization experiments in a supersonic jet that provide a time-constant for the excimer formation of around 6–7 ps, in good agreement with theory. Finally, in order to explore how the crystal environment influences the excimer formation dynamics we perform large scale QM/MM nonadiabatic dynamics simulations on a pyrene crystal in the framework of the long-range corrected tight-binding TDDFT. In contrast to the isolated dimer, the excimer formation in the crystal follows a single reaction pathway in which the initially excited parallel slip motion is strongly damped by the interaction with the surrounding molecules leading to the slow excimer stabilization on a picosecond time scale. KW - exciton dynamics KW - pyrene dimer Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-159514 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C7CP03990E N1 - Accepted version VL - 19 IS - 36 ER - TY - INPR A1 - Hoche, Joscha A1 - Schmitt, Hans-Christian A1 - Humeniuk, Alexander A1 - Fischer, Ingo A1 - Mitrić, Roland A1 - Röhr, Merle I. S. T1 - The mechanism of excimer formation: an experimental and theoretical study on the pyrene dimer T2 - Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics N2 - The understanding of excimer formation in organic materials is of fundamental importance, since excimers profoundly influence their functional performance in applications such as light-harvesting, photovoltaics or organic electronics. We present a joint experimental and theoretical study of the ultrafast dynamics of excimer formation in the pyrene dimer in a supersonic jet, which is the archetype of an excimer forming system. We perform simulations of the nonadiabatic photodynamics in the frame of TDDFT that reveal two distinct excimer formation pathways in the gas-phase dimer. The first pathway involves local excited state relaxation close to the initial Franck–Condon geometry that is characterized by a strong excitation of the stacking coordinate exhibiting damped oscillations with a period of 350 fs that persist for several picoseconds. The second excimer forming pathway involves large amplitude oscillations along the parallel shift coordinate with a period of ≈900 fs that after intramolecular vibrational energy redistribution leads to the formation of a perfectly stacked dimer. The electronic relaxation within the excitonic manifold is mediated by the presence of intermolecular conical intersections formed between fully delocalized excitonic states. Such conical intersections may generally arise in stacked π-conjugated aggregates due to the interplay between the long-range and short-range electronic coupling. The simulations are supported by picosecond photoionization experiments in a supersonic jet that provide a time-constant for the excimer formation of around 6–7 ps, in good agreement with theory. Finally, in order to explore how the crystal environment influences the excimer formation dynamics we perform large scale QM/MM nonadiabatic dynamics simulations on a pyrene crystal in the framework of the long-range corrected tight-binding TDDFT. In contrast to the isolated dimer, the excimer formation in the crystal follows a single reaction pathway in which the initially excited parallel slip motion is strongly damped by the interaction with the surrounding molecules leading to the slow excimer stabilization on a picosecond time scale. KW - exciton dynamics KW - pyrene dimer Y1 - 2017 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-159656 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C7CP03990E N1 - Submitted version ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Hoche, Joscha A1 - Schulz, Alexander A1 - Dietrich, Lysanne Monika A1 - Humeniuk, Alexander A1 - Stolte, Matthias A1 - Schmidt, David A1 - Brixner, Tobias A1 - Würthner, Frank A1 - Mitric, Roland T1 - The origin of the solvent dependence of fluorescence quantum yields in dipolar merocyanine dyes JF - Chemical Science N2 - Fluorophores with high quantum yields are desired for a variety of applications. Optimization of promising chromophores requires an understanding of the non-radiative decay channels that compete with the emission of photons. We synthesized a new derivative of the famous laser dye 4-dicyanomethylen-2-methyl-6-p-dimethylaminostyryl-4H-pyran (DCM),i.e., merocyanine 4-(dicyanomethylene)-2-tert-butyl-6-[3-(3-butyl-benzothiazol-2-ylidene)1-propenyl]-4H-pyran (DCBT). We measured fluorescence lifetimes and quantum yields in a variety of solvents and found a trend opposite to the energy gap law.This motivated a theoretical investigation into the possible non-radiative decay channels. We propose that a barrier to a conical intersection exists that is very sensitive to the solvent polarity. The conical intersection is characterized by a twisted geometry which allows a subsequent photoisomerization. Transient absorption measurements confirmed the formation of a photoisomer in unpolar solvents, while the measurements of fluorescence quantum yields at low temperature demonstrated the existence of an activation energy barrier. KW - solvent-dependent fluorescence yield Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-198707 UR - https://doi.org/10.1039/C9SC05012D VL - 10 ER - TY - INPR A1 - Humeniuk, Alexander A1 - Bužančić, Margarita A1 - Hoche, Joscha A1 - Cerezo, Javier A1 - Mitric, Roland A1 - Santoro, Fabrizio A1 - Bonačić-Koutecky, Vlasta T1 - Predicting fluorescence quantum yields for molecules in solution: A critical assessment of the harmonic approximation and the choice of the lineshape function T2 - The Journal of Chemical Physics N2 - For the rational design of new fluorophores, reliable predictions of fluorescence quantum yields from first principles would be of great help. However, efficient computational approaches for predicting transition rates usually assume that the vibrational structure is harmonic. While the harmonic approximation has been used successfully to predict vibrationally resolved spectra and radiative rates, its reliability for non-radiative rates is much more questionable. Since non-adiabatic transitions convert large amounts of electronic energy into vibrational energy, the highly excited final vibrational states deviate greatly from harmonic oscillator eigenfunctions. We employ a time-dependent formalism to compute radiative and non-radiative rates for transitions and study the dependence on model parameters. For several coumarin dyes we compare different adiabatic and vertical harmonic models (AS, ASF, AH, VG, VGF, VH), in order to dissect the importance of displacements, frequency changes and Duschinsky rotations. In addition we analyze the effect of different broadening functions (Gaussian, Lorentzian or Voigt). Moreover, to assess the qualitative influence of anharmonicity on the internal conversion rate, we develop a simplified anharmonic model. We adress the reliability of these models considering the potential errors introduced by the harmonic approximation and the phenomenological width of the broadening function. KW - fluorescence quantum yield Y1 - 2020 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-199305 UR - https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5143212 N1 - Accepted Manuscript. N1 - This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in A. Humeniuk et al. J. Chem. Phys. 152, 054107 (2020); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5143212 and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5143212. ER - TY - INPR A1 - Lindner, Joachim O. A1 - Sultangaleeva, Karina A1 - Röhr, Merle I. S. A1 - Mitric, Roland T1 - metaFALCON: A program package for automatic sampling of conical intersection seams using multistate metadynamics T2 - Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation N2 - The multistate metadynamics for automatic exploration of conical intersection seams and systematic location of minimum energy crossing points in molecular systems and its implementation into the software package metaFALCON is presented. Based on a locally modified energy gap between two Born–Oppenheimer electronic states as a collective variable, multistate metadynamics trajectories are driven toward an intersection point starting from an arbitrary ground state geometry and are subsequently forced to explore the conical intersection seam landscape. For this purpose, an additional collective variable capable of distinguishing structures within the seam needs to be defined and an additional bias is introduced into the off-diagonal elements of an extended (multistate) electronic Hamiltonian. We demonstrate the performance of the algorithm on the examples of the 1,3-butadiene, benzene, and 9H-adenine molecules, where multiple minimum energy crossing points could be systematically located using the Wiener number or Cremer–Pople parameters as collective variables. Finally, with the example of 9H-adenine, we show that the multistate metadynamics potential can be used to obtain a global picture of a conical intersection seam. Our method can be straightforwardly connected with any ab initio or semiempirical electronic structure theory that provides energies and gradients of the respective electronic states and can serve for systematic elucidation of the role of conical intersections in the photophysics and photochemistry of complex molecular systems, thus complementing nonadiabatic dynamics simulations. KW - Computational Chemistry KW - Metadynamics KW - Hydrogen KW - Hydrocarbons KW - Chemical Structure Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-199258 UR - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jctc.9b00029 N1 - This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation 2019, 15, 6, 3450-3460. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jctc.9b00029. ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lisinetskaya, Polina A1 - Braun, Christian A1 - Proch, Sebastian A1 - Kim, Young Dok A1 - Ganteför, Gerd A1 - Mitrić, Roland T1 - Excited state nonadiabatic dynamics of bare and hydrated anionic gold clusters Au\(^−_3\)[H\(_2\)O]\(_n\) (n=0-2) JF - Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics N2 - We present a joint theoretical and experimental study of excited state dynamics in pure and hydrated anionic gold clusters Au\(^-_3\)[H\(_2\)O]\(_n\) (n = 0-2). We employ mixed quantum-classical dynamics combined with femtosecond time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy in order to investigate the influence of hydration on excited state lifetimes and photo-dissociation dynamics. A gradual decrease of the excited state lifetime with the number of adsorbed water molecules as well as gold cluster fragmentation quenching by two or more water molecules are observed both in experiment and in simulations. Non-radiative relaxation and dissociation in excited states are found to be responsible for the excited state population depletion. Time constants of these two processes strongly depend on the number of water molecules leading to the possibility to modulate excited state dynamics and fragmentation of the anionic cluster by adsorption of water molecules. KW - nonadiabatic dynamics KW - metal cluster KW - time-resolved photoelectron spectroscopy Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-159176 UR - https://doi.org/10.1039/C5CP04297F SN - 1463-9076 N1 - Accepted version VL - 18 IS - 9 ER - TY - INPR A1 - Lisinetskaya, Polina G. A1 - Mitric, Roland T1 - Collective Response in DNA-Stabilized Silver Cluster Assemblies from First-Principles Simulations T2 - The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters N2 - We investigate fluorescence resonant energy transfer and concurrent electron dynamics in a pair of DNA-stabilized silver clusters. For this purpose we introduce a methodology for the simulation of collective optoelectronic properties of coupled molecular aggregates starting from first-principles quantum chemistry, which can be further applied to a broad range of coupled molecular systems to study their electro-optical response. Our simulations reveal the existence of low-energy coupled excitonic states, which enable ultrafast energy transport between subunits, and give insight into the origin of the fluorescence signal in coupled DNA-stabilized silver clusters, which have been recently experimentally detected. Hence, we demonstrate the possibility of constructing ultrasmall energy transmission lines and optical converters based on these hybrid molecular systems. KW - Metal clusters Y1 - 2019 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-198729 UR - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b03136 N1 - This document is the unedited Author’s version of a Submitted Work that was subsequently accepted for publication in Journal of Physical Chemistry A, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review. To access the final edited and published work see The Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters 2019, 10, 24, 7884-7889. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.9b03136. ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Lisinetskaya, Polina A1 - Röhr, Merle I. S. A1 - Mitrić, Roland T1 - First-principles simulation of light propagation and exciton dynamics in metal cluster nanostructures JF - Applied Physics B N2 - We present a theoretical approach for the simulation of the electric field and exciton propagation in ordered arrays constructed of molecular-sized noble metal clusters bound to organic polymer templates. In order to describe the electronic coupling between individual constituents of the nanostructure we use the ab initio parameterized transition charge method which is more accurate than the usual dipole-dipole coupling. The electronic population dynamics in the nanostructure under an external laser pulse excitation is simulated by numerical integration of the time-dependent Schrodinger equation employing the fully coupled Hamiltonian. The solution of the TDSE gives rise to time-dependent partial point charges for each subunit of the nanostructure, and the spatio-temporal electric field distribution is evaluated by means of classical electrodynamics methods. The time-dependent partial charges are determined based on the stationary partial and transition charges obtained in the framework of the TDDFT. In order to treat large plasmonic nanostructures constructed of many constituents, the approximate self-consistent iterative approach presented in (Lisinetskaya and Mitric in Phys Rev B 89:035433, 2014) is modified to include the transition-charge-based interaction. The developed methods are used to study the optical response and exciton dynamics of Ag-3(+) and porphyrin-Ag-4 dimers. Subsequently, the spatio-temporal electric field distribution in a ring constructed of ten porphyrin-Ag-4 subunits under the action of circularly polarized laser pulse is simulated. The presented methodology provides a theoretical basis for the investigation of coupled light-exciton propagation in nanoarchitectures built from molecular size metal nanoclusters in which quantum confinement effects are important. KW - metal-cluster hybrid systems KW - exciton transfer KW - optical response KW - transition density KW - total electric field KW - electric field distribution KW - transition dipole moment KW - transition charge Y1 - 2016 U6 - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-159193 UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-016-6436-6 SN - 0946-2171 N1 - This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Apllied Physcis B. The final authenticated version is available online at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00340-016-6436-6 VL - 122 IS - 6 ER -