Theoretical analysis of excited states and energy transfer mechanism in conjugated dendrimers

The excited states of the phenylene ethynylene dendrimer are investigated comprehensively by various electronic-structure methods. Several computational methods, including SCS-ADC(2), TDHF, TDDFT with different functionals (B3LYP, BH&HLYP, CAM-B3LYP), and DFT/MRCI, are applied in systematic calculations. The theoretical approach based on the one-electron transition density matrix is used to understand the electronic characters of excited states, particularly the contributions of local excitations and charge-transfer excitations within all interacting conjugated branches. Furthermore, the potential energy curves of low-lying electronic states as the functions of ethynylene bonds are constructed at different theoretical levels. This work provides us theoretical insights on the intramolecular excited-state energy transfer mechanism of the dendrimers at the state-of-the-art electronic-structure theories.