Time dependent DFT investigation of the optical properties of artificial light harvesting special pairs

Abstract

Computational modeling of selected artificial special pairs has been carried out. The structures chosen are bio-inspired molecular models of the light harvesting system II that have been previously investigated experimentally. Time-dependent density functional theory calculations have been employed to characterize the inter-macrocycle interactions resulting from two zinc porphyrins that are covalently linked with rigid linkers that vary the inter-porphyrin distance and the inter-planar angle in a C_2v framework. The effects of varying the linker structure have been explored for electronic states with energies up to and including the Soret-correlated states in the dimer. An expansion of the Gouterman four orbital model for the monomers to an eight orbital model in the dimers provides a reasonable explanation of the inter-macrocycle interactions and provides insight into their experimental properties.