A spectroscopic study of indigo dye in aqueous solution: A combined experimental and TD-DFT study

Abstract

This study reports UV–Visible spectra and electronic structures of indigo (IG) in aqueous solution using a combination of experimental and theoretical methods. In the visible region, the experimental absorption spectrum of the solution showed a broad peak with the longest wavelength of maximal absorption (λmax) value at 708 nm. For the theoretical method, a trans-IG monomer and a trans-IG bound with two water molecules (IG.2W) were optimized in the ground state using the B3LYP and B3LYP-D3 calculations with the 6-31 + G(d,p) basis set and the SCRF-CPCM model for taking solvent effect into account was also applied. Sequentially, the UV–Visible spectra and λmax of the optimized trans-IG and IG.2W models in the implicit water were simulated by the time-dependent density functional theory (TD-DFT) calculations. The TD-DFT methods including BLYP, B3LYP, PBE0, CAM-B3LYP, M06-2X, ωB97XD, LC-BLYP, and LC-ωPBE functionals without and with the D3 correction and the 6-31 + G(d,p) basis set were selected. The results pointed out that BLYP and BLYP-D3 were the best methods because they could reproduce the experimental λmax value of IG in aqueous solution. The predicted λmax values of IG.2W were almost equal to 708 nm (the experimental data), indicating that IG.2W could be responsible for optical properties of IG.