Water hydrogen-bonding effects on the ground and low-lying excited states of dipyridyl isomers

Abstract

Abstract In this work, we examined the ground and low-lying excited states of six dipyridyl isomers (2,2′-dipyridyl, 2,3′-dipyridyl, 2,4′-dipyridyl, 3,3′-dipyridyl, 3,4′-dipyridyl, and 4,4′-dipyridyl), emphasizing the effects that solvation (water) molecules have on properties such as ground state equilibrium structures, relative energies in terms of conformations and transition states (regarding possible cis–trans interconversions), vertical excitation energies (VEs), generalized oscillator strengths (GOS), and excited state structures. Density functional theory (DFT) and its time-dependent formalism (TD-DFT) were used for determining all the ground state and excited state properties, respectively, both being employed with the CAM-B3LYP exchange–correlation functional and the cc-pVTZ basis set. In addition, effects caused by interactions with the solvent environment were probed by means of using two different approaches: i) the integral equation formalism polarizable continuum model (IEF-PCM) and ii) a composite solvation model (CSM) through the incorporation of explicit water molecules in combination with the IEF-PCM. In general, a decrease in the relative energies regarding a given cis/trans counterpart is noticed when solvation is considered independently from the model used; all the dipyridyl cis/trans isomers became (practically) isoenergetical due to dipyridyl-H2O hydrogen-bonding interactions. Moreover, the interconversion barriers were also found to be lowered due to solvation effects. For instance, the energy barrier in terms of interconversion of the trans 2,2′-dipyridyl to the cis 2,2′-dipyridyl was determined as (approximately) 67 % of the corresponding value obtained in the gas-phase. Although no major differences regarding the values of the VEs associated to a bright state are suggested from the comparison between the results obtained for a given isomer through the consideration of solvation and those corresponding determined in the gas-phase, the GOS are all increased when solvation is considered, suggesting an enhancement in the photoabsorption of all the isomers when in presence of solvent. In addition and in contrast to what was seen previously in the case of the gas-phase, 4,4′-dipyridyl presented a bright state among the five lowest-lying excited singlets (accessible at the UVC energy region), which is located at 5.49\u202feV (with GOS =\u202f0.4465) at the TD-DFT/CAM-B3LYP/cc-pVTZ level of theory in water (IEF-PCM) and at 5.47\u202feV (with GOS\u202f=\u202f0.5331) at the same level of theory with the CSM. Given that no significant change was noticed in the optimized structures for the excited states, it is possible to infer that all the compounds will decompose through photo decomposition (chemical reaction occurring in the excited state) rather than direct photolysis when in solution.