Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics Study of the Photoreaction of 1,1′-Dimethylstilbene upon S0 → S1 Excitation

Abstract

Ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD) simulations were carried out for ππ*-excited 1,1'-dimethylstilbene (dmSB) at the spin-flip time-dependent density functional theory (SF-TDDFT) level with the TSF-index technique, to get insights into the substitution effects on the photoisomerization dynamics of stilbene (SB). It is found that the reaction path from the Franck-Condon structure of cis-dmSB is oriented toward the 4,4-dihydrophenanthrene (DHP) side from the beginning, which is in contrast to the case of SB where the pathway is oriented toward the twist side in the initial stage. The optimized geometries of minima and the minimum-energy conical intersection (MECI) suggested that molecules in the DHP region could easily decay to the ground state. On the other hand, S1/S0-MECI and S1-minimum in the twist region have a relatively different geometry from each other, which is consistent with the experimental observation of the long lifetime of the perpendicular structure. AIMD simulations showed that more trajectories enter the well of the DHP side than the well of the twist side and that all of the trajectories going to the DHP side reached the S1/S0-CI region within ∼0.2 ps on average, while very few trajectories reached S1/S0-CI even after 1 ps in the twist region. Decrease in the S1 population in the cis and twist regions qualitatively reproduced the temporal profiles of the transient absorption bands of dmSB observed in the visible and ultraviolet regions, respectively.