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Quantum interference effects elucidate triplet-pair formation dynamics in intramolecular singlet-fission molecules

Nature Chemistry volume 15, pages 339–346 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Quantum interference (QI)—the constructive or destructive interference of conduction pathways through molecular orbitals—plays a fundamental role in enhancing or suppressing charge and spin transport in organic molecular electronics. Graphical models were developed to predict constructive versus destructive interference in polyaromatic hydrocarbons and have successfully estimated the large conductivity differences observed in single-molecule transport measurements. A major challenge lies in extending these models to excitonic (photoexcited) processes, which typically involve distinct orbitals with different symmetries. Here we investigate how QI models can be applied as bridging moieties in intramolecular singlet-fission compounds to predict relative rates of triplet pair formation. In a series of bridged intramolecular singlet-fission dimers, we found that destructive QI always leads to a slower triplet pair formation across different bridge lengths and geometries. A combined experimental and theoretical approach reveals the critical considerations of bridge topology and frontier molecular orbital energies in applying QI conductance principles to predict rates of multiexciton generation.

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Fig. 1: Model systems designed to investigate the role of QI.
Fig. 2: Determination of the time constants for triplet pair formation.
Fig. 3: Comparison of SF rates (normalized to the largest kSF) across all Ph, N and A bridges in this work.
Fig. 4: Contributions to the absorption spectra from the CT wavefunctions that mediate fast SF.

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Data availability

The raw transient absorption data used to generate Figs. 2 and 3 and the corresponding analysis are freely available via the Dryad public repository: https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.x95x69pnn. Additional data are available upon request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences under award no. DE-SC0022036 (M.Y.S. and L.M.C.) and the National Science Foundation under award no. CHE-1764152 (S.M.). K.R.P. thanks the Department of Defense for a National Defense Science and Engineering (NDSEG) Fellowship. J.Z. thanks the Columbia College Science Scholars Program and Guthikonda Fellowship. X.Y. acknowledges the Beijing Institute of Technology Research Fund Program for Young Scholars, and the Analysis and Testing Center of Beijing Institute of Technology for NMR and mass spectrometry characterization. This research used resources at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, which is a US DOE Office of Science Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory under contract DE-SC0012704.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

    Kaia R. Parenti, Huaxi Huang, Daniel Malinowski, Jocelyn Zhang & Luis M. Campos

  2. Department of Physics, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Rafi Chesler & Sumit Mazumdar

  3. Department of Physics, Graduate Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Guiying He & Matthew Y. Sfeir

  4. Photonics Initiative, Advanced Science Research Center, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA

    Guiying He & Matthew Y. Sfeir

  5. Institute for Theoretical Solid State Physics, Leibniz IFW Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Pritam Bhattacharyya

  6. Key Laboratory of Cluster Science, Ministry of Education of China, Beijing Key Laboratory of Photoelectronic/Electrophotonic Conversion Materials, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, P. R. China

    Beibei Xiao & Xiaodong Yin

  7. Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Alok Shukla

  8. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Sumit Mazumdar

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  1. Kaia R. Parenti
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Contributions

S.M., M.Y.S and L.M.C. oversaw the project. K.R.P., M.Y.S. and L.M.C. designed the molecules. G.H. collected the transient absorption spectroscopy data and K.R.P., G.H. and M.Y.S. carried out data analysis. K.R.P., B.X., H.H., D.M. and J.Z. synthesized and characterized the molecules, supervised by X.Y. and L.M.C. The theory models were designed by S.M. and A.S. PPP calculations were carried out by R.C. and P.B. Density functional theory calculations were carried out by G.H. The paper was written by K.R.P., S.M., M.Y.S. and L.M.C. with contributions from all authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Sumit Mazumdar, Matthew Y. Sfeir or Luis M. Campos.

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Nature Chemistry thanks Ferdinand Grozema and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Density functional theory geometry calculations.

The ground state geometry of P–15N–P and P–16N–P are optimized using density functional theory (DFT) at the B3LYP/6-31G(d) level. Substitution at the 2, 6 and 7 positions of naphthalene gives a dihedral angle of ~35°, consistent with previous calculations on acene dimers10. Substitution at the 1 and 5 positions of naphthalene gives a more distorted structure with a dihedral angle of ~58°. As has been previously shown, singlet fission slows down considerably in highly twisted dimers10,11. We show the geometry of the twisted dimers and summarize all the naphthalene substitution positions and calculated dihedral angles in Extended Data Fig. 2.

Extended Data Fig. 2

Naphthalene substitution and corresponding dihedral angles calculated with DFT.

Source data

Extended Data Fig. 3 Hückel energy level distribution for T–N–T displaying the active space of 24 MOs.

The MRSDCI calculations are over an active space of MOs about the chemical potential that is smaller than the complete set. The lowest few bonding MOs are frozen (that is, excitations from these lowest MOs are not included in the CI calculations) and the highest MOs related to these by charge-conjugation symmetry are excluded from the active space. As of now, we have performed MRSDCI calculations over active spaces of 22–30 MOs, 11–15 bonding and 11–15 antibonding. These are absolutely the largest active spaces over which calculations of \(^1\left| {TT} \right\rangle\) have ever been done. We illustrate our procedure with the specific case of T–N–T. The localized tetracene Hückel bonding (red) and antibonding (blue) MOs, and the naphthalene (green) MOs constitute the active MO space in our T–N–T calculations. For calculations on T–Ph–T, T–A–T, P–Ph–P, P–N–P and P–A–P, we retained 20 + 4, 16 + 6, 20 + 4, 20 + 6 and 20 + 6 MOs, respectively, where the numbers in each sum indicate the chromophore MOs plus the linker MOs.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Time constants for singlet fission, triplet pair decay and free triplet decay.

Uncertainties are +/− 5%.

Source data

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–12, discussion and Table 1.

Source data

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 2

Naphthalene substitution and corresponding dihedral angles calculated with DFT.

Source Data Extended Data Fig. 4

Time constants for singlet fission, triplet pair decay, and free triplet decay. Uncertainties are +/− 5%.

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Parenti, K.R., Chesler, R., He, G. et al. Quantum interference effects elucidate triplet-pair formation dynamics in intramolecular singlet-fission molecules. Nat. Chem. 15, 339–346 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-022-01107-8

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