DFT study of the intrinsic electronic, optical, NBO, transport, and thermodynamic properties of 12,12-dimethyl-7-phenyl-7,12-dihydrobenzo[a]acridine-3-carbonitrile (BACN)

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the structural, vibrational, electronic, optical, transport, and thermodynamic properties of pure BACN using density functional theory (DFT). The B3LYP, B3PW91, CAM-B3LYP and ωB97XD functionals associated with the basis sets 6-31G(d,p) and 6-311G(d,p) were used. With regard to the electronic and transport properties, analysis of the HOMO and LUMO frontier orbitals, the gap values obtained and the reorganisation energies show that BACN is a good donor-acceptor semiconductor and has a good hole transport capacity. The study of non-linear optical properties shows that BACN is a good candidate for applications in nonlinear optics (NLO) because of its first-order hyperpolarisability, which is higher than that of urea. The time density functional theory (TD-DFT) approach was used for the photophysical analysis of BACN. It was found that BACN exhibits a maximum absorption in the near-UV range, peaking at 222.42 nm, and strong emission in the near-UV range with a maximum wavelength value of 229.75 nm through TD-CAM-B3LYP/6-311G(d,p). The Stokes shift values obtained indicate that the molecule is chemically stable. The full width at half-maximum (FWHM) and radiative lifetime values for this molecule are 19.924 nm and 16.071 ns, respectively. These results show that BACN is a fluorescent material that can be used as an emitter material for designing and improving the colour purity of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs).