Yunzhi Li

Circularly Polarized Luminescence of Chiral Perylene Diimide Based Enantiomers Triggered by Supramolecular Self-Assembly.

Two perylene diimide (PDI) enantiomers (d/l-PDI) incorporating the d/l-alanine moiety have been designed and synthesized. d/l-PDI in chloroform displays bright-yellow fluorescence that is redshifted to orange-red when the solvent contains a methanol fraction of 99 vol %. No circular dichroism (CD) or circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) signals were observed for d/l-PDI enantiomers in CHCl3 . Interestingly, the d/l-PDI enantiomers exhibit clear mirror-image Cotton effects and CPL emission in the aggregate state. The optical anisotropy factor (glum ) is as high as 0.02 at fm =99 %, which can be attributed to self-assembly through intermolecular π-π interactions in the aggregate state.

Circularly polarized luminescence based chirality transfer of the chiral BINOL moiety via rigid π-conjugation chain backbone structures

Three kinds of chiral BINOL-based polymers could be synthesized by polymerization in a Pd-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction. The resulting chiral polymers can exhibit strong mirror image Cotton effects. Interestingly, only P2 and P3 can emit circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) signals, which can be attributed to the chirality transfer of the BINOL moiety via the rigid π-conjugation chain backbone structure system. This work can develop a new strategy for the design of novel CPL materials.

Benchmark Relative Energies for Large Water Clusters with the Generalized Energy-Based Fragmentation Method

The generalized energy-based fragmentation (GEBF) method has been applied to investigate relative energies of large water clusters (H2O)n (n = 32, 64) with the coupled-cluster singles and doubles with noniterative triple excitations (CCSD(T)) and second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) at the complete basis set (CBS) limit. Here large water clusters are chosen to be representative structures sampled from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of liquid water. Our calculations show that the GEBF method is capable of providing highly accurate relative energies for these water clusters in a cost-effective way. We demonstrate that the relative energies from GEBF-MP2/CBS are in excellent agreement with those from GEBF-CCSD(T)/CBS for these water clusters. With the GEBF-CCSD(T)/CBS relative energies as the benchmark results, we have assessed the performance of several theoretical methods widely used for ab initio MD simulations of liquids and aqueous solutions. These methods include density functional theory (DFT) with a number of different functionals, MP2, and density functional tight-binding (the third generation, DFTB3 in short). We find that MP2/aug-cc-pVDZ and several DFT methods (such as LC-ωPBE-D3 and ωB97XD) with the aug-cc-pVTZ basis set can provide satisfactory descriptions for these water clusters. Some widely used functionals (such as B3LYP, PBE0) and DFTB3 are not accurate enough for describing the relative energies of large water clusters. Although the basis set dependence of DFT is less than that of ab initio electron correlation methods, we recommend the combination of a few best functionals and large basis sets (at least aug-cc-pVTZ) in theoretical studies on water clusters or aqueous solutions.

Generalized energy-based fragmentation approach for modeling condensed phase systems

We have extended the generalized energy‐based fragmentation (GEBF) method to condensed phase systems with periodic boundary condition (PBC). The so‐called PBC‐GEBF method provides an alternative way of calculating electronic structures of condensed phase systems, whose accuracy is comparable to standard periodic electronic structure methods for some types of condensed phase systems such as molecular crystals and ionic liquid crystals. Within the PBC‐GEBF approach, the unit cell energy (or properties) of a condensed phase system can be evaluated as a linear combination of ground‐state energies (or corresponding properties) of a series of electrostatically embedded subsystems, which can be routinely calculated with existing molecular quantum chemistry packages. With the PBC‐GEBF approach, one can routinely perform ab initio calculations at post‐Hartree–Fock levels, including Møller–Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) or coupled cluster singles and doubles, on certain types of condensed phase systems, in which periodic post‐Hartree–Fock methods are not available or not feasible computationally. This review will offer an overview of the methodology and implementation of the PBC‐GEBF method and its applications in predicting the structures, lattice energies, and vibrational spectra of a wide range of molecular and ionic liquid crystals. Our results show that the PBC‐GEBF approach at post‐Hartree–Fock theory level can generally provide highly accurate descriptions on the structure and properties of crystals under study. For example, the vibrational spectra of the crystalline BH3NH3 predicted by the PBC‐GEBF approach at the MP2 level are in better agreement with the experimentally observed spectra, than those based on density functional theory calculations. WIREs Comput Mol Sci 2017, 7:e1297. doi: 10.1002/wcms.1297